Remarks by the Minister of Health during the USAID Award Ceremony in Washington DC
Programme Director,
Our host the USAID Administrator, Ms Gayle Smith,
Excellencies and Ambassadors,
Distinguished Members of Congress,
Invited guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good evening.
Thank you, Ambassador Gaspard, for your kind introduction. I am honoured to be here today as one of the guests of USAID. Thank you, Administrator Smith, for your very kind invitation.
I am here today, both as the Minister of Health of South Africa and as the Chairperson of the Board of the Stop TB Partnership.
I may well be speaking to the converted but we all know that TB has now become the leading infectious killer globally. So it may surprise many that I come here today with a sense of great optimism.
This optimism is informed by my belief, and I do believe that I share this optimism with many in the TB community, that we can end the TB epidemic in our lifetime. One of the reasons for my optimism is that I think that, finally, the TB community has a vision to match the scale of the problem. We have learned from the HIV community in this regard – and we shouldn’t be shy to confess this!
Last September, Heads of State from around the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals and one of the health related goals is to end TB by 2030. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the Stop TB Partnership developed a roadmap called the Global Plan to End TB 2016-2020. We aim to reach this through 90-90-90 targets to screen, test and treat over 90% of people with TB.
In addition, in late December 2015 the White House launched the Action Plan for MDR TB. So, for the first time, we are united and determined to see this fight through to the end. I am convinced that if we maintain this ambition and optimism, we will not fail provided that we match our ambition with the needed resources.
The Global Plan to End TB 2016-2020 sets out the investment needed to reach the goal to End TB by 2030. Of the $13 billion per year in funding called for in the Plan, current funding levels for TB are half of what is required.
While much of this investment needs to come from domestic budgets, donor support is particularly important for low-income countries, where TB is still a leading health challenge. Nearly 70% of global TB patients live in low-income or lower-middle income countries. Those countries, many of whom are fragile or post conflict states, benefit greatly from the partnership and the support of the partners present here today.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria continues to provide almost 80% of all international funding for TB. Without this support, we will not End TB, or AIDS and Malaria, by 2030. I hope you will join me in calling on world leaders to support a fully replenished Global Fund at their fifth replenishment taking place later this year.
Adequate financing for TB is more important than ever, especially because of drug resistant TB. Thanks to the work of the UK Review on Anti-Microbial Resistance, G7 Heads of State issued a special declaration recognizing that drug-resistance to TB and other infections can reverse decades of progress at the cost of millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Of the estimated 700,000 deaths per year caused by antimicrobial infections, MDR-TB is responsible for nearly one-third of these deaths and could cost the global economy $US 16.7 trillion by 2050.
President Obama fully understands these risks and this is why the US Action Plan on MDR-TB has been issued by his administration. We need to make sure that we prevent the further development and spread of MDR TB, we need to update our policies, and we need to ensure rapid roll out of new diagnostic tools, medicines and treatment regimens. Of course we must also close the tap by treating drug sensitive TB rapidly and correctly. This is the only way we will the fight against MDR-TB.
We know we cannot win the fight against TB in isolation. Our success in ending both AIDS and TB is inexorably tied together, given that TB continues to be responsible for one out of three AIDS deaths. We will not end AIDS without ending TB.
The AIDS 2016 conference will be held in Durban South Africa for the second time. Unlike the first in the year 2000, this time we look forward to welcoming the world with much optimism. I wish to personally welcome everyone present here to attend IAS 2016 in my country.
In South Africa, we are ensuring that every person who receives a HIV test is also tested for TB, and every person with TB receives a HIV test. Sadly, this is still not the case in many places. In South Africa we are also screening all prisoners, mineworkers and communities living close to mines for TB because we know that these are three sectors of the populations most vulnerable to the disease and are the key to End TB. Sadly, this is also not being done in many places.
In South Africa we have adopted the latest TB diagnostic tool, the Genexpert (and use more than 50% of the global volume of the test) and have the largest number of MDR-TB patients on the newest medicine, bedaquiline. We are committed to doing everything possible to halt and reverse the incidence and mortality from TB.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time for the world to treat tuberculosis with the same urgency it demonstrated in responding to major new health threats like Ebola and the Zika virus. After all, TB is a disease in the last 200 years killed more people than the major epidemics, Ebola, malaria, HIV itself, small pox, bubonic plague, influenza, polio and cholera all added together.
Here is a disease that is killing more than 1.5m and infecting 9 m people globally – yet this disease is unable to evoke the emotions, passion, the urgency and the activism that we have seen in all the other epidemics!
Is this because TB is a silent killer in the far corners of the world that nobody can see! Hence we are making a call to all leaders of the world, heads of state and governments, heads of major institutions, religious leaders, activists, academics, major world blocs like the BRICS, EU, G7, G20 and the AU and indeed the UN General Assembly itself to put TB on the agenda like they did with all the major pandemics that have beset the world thus far.
First and foremost we want them to work together with urgency to find an effective vaccine against TB to ensure that no one contracts TB in the first place. In the meantime we must be able to diagnose TB with a rapid diagnostic test much like we have for HIV. We must have an effective treatment that cures TB and MDR-TB in weeks, rather than months, without the debilitating side effects of current treatments.
All of this requires political leadership, resources, and scientific rigor and fortitude which I am sure that with your support we can muster.
Thank you for this honour tonight as the Chairperson of the Stop TB Partnership, co-chair of the Global TB Caucus of Parliamentarians and as Minister of Health of South Africa, I accept this award with great humility on behalf of the people in my country and the billions of people around the world who have fallen victim to TB. Thank you to the US government for leading the world in the fight to End TB. And I would like to thank each of you here tonight for your commitment.
Our challenge now is to convince the rest of world to seize this opportunity and contribute their collective resources towards fighting TB.
Let’s send a clear message ahead of World TB Day on March 24th – we are united to end TB, and working together, we will succeed.
I thank you!
