The ATS welcomes today’s Moscow Declaration to End Tuberculosis, a commitment to accelerate the Global End TB Strategy. The Declaration, signed by 75 countries, was agreed to at the historic first WHO Global Ministerial Conference on TB in Moscow, Russia. It commits signing countries to the following four overall goals:
- Advancing the TB response within the Sustainable Development Goals agenda;
- Ensuring sufficient and sustainable financing;
- Pursuing science, research and innovation;
- Developing a multi-sectoral accountability framework.
The declaration calls for a global scale up of TB prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care aimed at achieving universal health coverage. It calls on countries to address multi-drug resistant (MDR)-TB as a global public health crisis through a national emergency response in all MDR-TB high-burden countries. The declaration urges an urgent expansion in multi-disciplinary TB research and innovation.
The Moscow conference and declaration mark growing global momentum to accelerate progress against TB. The Moscow Declaration will be used to inform and build on this momentum to achieve political commitment for the first-ever United National High-Level Meeting in TB in September 2018.
