114 country delegations, including 75 Ministers, and over 1000 participants are on their way shortly to Moscow for the First WHO Global Ministerial Conference “Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era: A Multisectoral Response”.
The high-level participants will advocate for increased commitment, action and resources from countries and partners to end the global tuberculosis (TB) epidemic as part of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda and the WHO End TB Strategy. The conference, on 16-17 November, is being hosted by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.
Among the participants beyond governments, are UN leaders, representatives of civil society, the private sector, academia and development agencies.
“We are very proud of the exceptional response received, which we see as a sign of commitment by governments and all partners engaged in the fight against TB. Every year, over 10 million people fall ill and 1.7 million people die due to TB. It is clear that the intensity of current efforts are not enough to tackle the scale of this problem and health security threat,” said Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Global TB Programme. “We are now at a crossroads between ending the TB epidemic and witnessing millions more people falling victim to it. We must commit to ending TB as our legacy for present and future generation.”
The conference will inform the first ever United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on TB in 2018, which will bring together Heads of State in New York.
In a video message, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who will attend the conference, stresses that through these two meetings, global leaders must enable transformational actions towards universal health coverage, increased and sustained financing, and innovative research to ultimately pursue the end of TB.
During the Global Ministerial Conference in Moscow, participants will hear keynote addresses; engage in four high-level plenary sessions addressing TB perspectives of some of the highest burden countries; perspectives of TB survivors and civil society; multisectoral engagement by multilateral agencies and bodies; and, the road ahead to the 2018 UNGA High-Level Meeting on TB.