UN Chief Urges Global Action on World TB Day to Stop Tuberculosis

In a message on Monday marking World TB Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for stepped-up efforts to fight tuberculosis. "World TB Day is an occasion to urge action to stop tuberculosis, a disease which still kills an appalling 4,000 people every day."

"The man-made multidrug-resistant strain and its even more lethal form, extensively drug-resistant TB, are both spreading," Ban said. "That is why the theme of this year's day is "I Am Stopping TB." This is a fight that can be won only with the collective commitment of millions of individuals: donors and researchers, doctors and health care workers, patients and family members."

"Thanks to a broad coalition of partners working to stop TB, the proportion of people who become ill with the disease is slowly falling. But this progress is not keeping pace with population growth, so more and more people are becoming infected with tuberculosis," Ban said. Indeed, the recent World Health Organization report on TB expressed concern over the "very modest" decline in cases, which fell by less than 1 percent between 2005 and 2006.

Ban praised Rwanda, Kenya, and Malawi for their efforts to screen more TB patients for HIV, and more HIV patients for TB. A UN global forum in June will focus on ways to cut the TB death rate among persons with HIV/AIDS, Ban said.

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