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WHO to spend 47 billion dollars to fight tuberculosis
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a new five-year plan to combat tuberculosis. The measures envisaged by the document suggest increasing the costs of diagnostics, treatment and research of this infection to 47 billion dollars. "The stakes are high: without a rapid increase in efforts to combat tuberculosis, by 2015 about 10 million people will die from this treatable disease," said WHO representative Marcos Espinal. Among the tasks outlined by WHO are increasing the success rate of tuberculosis treatment worldwide to 90 percent (according to data for 2008/2009, this figure is 86 percent), ensuring HIV testing for 100 percent of tuberculosis patients, increasing the number of laboratories for detecting tuberculosis in developing countries, introducing modern methods of diagnosing the infection, and developing new drugs. According to estimates by the international organization, currently about 2 million people die from tuberculosis every year. The overwhelming majority of these deaths occur in the countries of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. The WHO estimates the cost of medical care for tuberculosis patients in the poorest regions of the world at $37 billion. Currently, the funding gap for these activities is $14 billion. In addition, the document provides for the allocation of $10 billion to finance research programs. Thus, the implementation of the plan is impossible without a significant increase in funding from donor countries. According to WHO calculations, the implementation of the set tasks will allow 5 million deaths to be avoided over the next five years, i.e., to reduce mortality from tuberculosis by half.