MSF and Stop TB Partnership at Global Ministerial Meeting on TB: High TB Prevalence Countries Must Urgently Meet New Global Testing and Treatment Standards

More than 30,000 people from 120 countries sign petition to urge head of WHO and ministers of health to address gaps in treatment, diagnostics for people living with TB

NEW YORK/MOSCOW/GENEVA, NOVEMBER 15, 2017—Ahead of the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on “Ending TB” in Moscow, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Stop TB Partnership, and tens of thousands of supporters called for countries with the most people affected by tuberculosis (TB) to implement the latest international treatment and testing standards by World TB Day, March 24, 2018.

This call follows the release of a new World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB report showing that progress in diagnosing and treating all forms of TB is stalling in most countries. More than 4.1 million people with TB remained undiagnosed or unreported in 2016, and only one in five people with multidrug-resistant (MDR–TB) were started on treatment. Of those people, just over half were cured.

“Why do we continue to remain out of step when it comes to testing people for TB when it’s the critical first step to treating this curable disease and preventing its spread?” said Dr. Francis Varaine, TB medical advisor at MSF. “Governments urgently need to step up to stop people from needlessly dying of TB, which remains the world’s top infectious disease killer."

According to "Out of Step,” a joint report by MSF and the Stop TB Partnership that reviews TB policies and practices in the 29 countries which account for nearly three-quarters of the global TB burden, 40 percent of people with TB remain undiagnosed. Only seven of these countries* have made Xpert MTB/RIF, a rapid molecular test to more easily and quickly diagnose TB, widely available. Newer medicines and regimens for treating drug-resistant (DR-TB) have demonstrated better outcomes than today’s standard regimens, but, globally, fewer than five percent of people who could have benefitted had access to these drugs in 2016.

“Despite its deadly toll, most countries lag behind in implementing the existing and new tools that are available to tackle TB,” said Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the Stop TB Partnership. “The WHO Global Ministerial Conference is the first step for concrete, bold and measurable commitments by ministers of health towards a strong accountability framework for heads of state and governments during the UN High Level meeting on TB (next year).”

This week, MSF and the Stop TB partnership released the report Out of Step in Eastern Europe and Central Asia” (EECA), presenting the results of an eight-country survey of national TB policies and practices. Among the countries surveyed, 75 percent have adopted a policy to use rapid molecular testing instead of older, slower testing methods, yet only half of those countries are actually using the test widely. An estimated 46,000 people with DR-TB in the EECA region went undiagnosed in 2015.

At the Global Ministerial Conference this week, Mariam Avanesova, who was treated for MDR-TB in Armenia in 2010-2012 and represents TBpeople, the Eurasian network of people with TB experience, will hand over a petition to WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus. The #StepUpforTB petition is an urgent call for health ministers in key TB-affected countries to get their TB policies and practices in line with international standards, as defined by WHO, including testing and treatment of TB and its drug-resistant forms. Initiated by MSF and the Stop TB Partnership, the petition has been signed by more than 30,000 people from around the world who want to see better care options for people living with TB.

“After being cured of MDR-TB, I decided to continue working in this area because I find it unacceptable that people are dying because either their diagnosis was too late and the drugs didn't work, or they simply quit because the side effects from 20 tablets a day for two years were too much,” Avanesova said. “I really want to appeal to all governments to step up to make timely TB testing and treatment accessible to all people who need it. Urgent action on the ground is what I'm hoping to see come out of this conference.”

MSF is an independent international medical humanitarian organization that delivers medical care to people affected by armed conflicts, epidemics, natural disasters, and exclusion from health care. Founded in 1971, MSF has operations in over 70 countries today. MSF has been treating people with TB for 30 years. In 2016, MSF treated more than 20,000 people with TB, including 2,700 people with MDR-TB.

*Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Georgia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe