TB fight making progress, but more funds needed, WHO says The
war on tuberculosis is getting new weapons for the first time in
decades, offering hope for controlling the deadly disease but
major funding shortfalls threaten progress, the World Health
Organisation said on Wednesday. “We are at a crossroads between
the elimination of TB within our lifetime, possibly, and
millions of avoidable deaths in the next several years,” Mario
Raviglione, director of the WHO Stop TB Department, said at a
press conference in Washington as the WHO released its annual
report. The choice, said Kenneth Castro, of the US Centres for
Disease Control and Prevention, at the same press conference, is
to “pay now, or pay more later”. The WHO has pledged to cut TB
deaths to half the 1990 rate, a goal the agency said in its new
report it was on track to achieve in most regions. The number of
new cases per capita had also fallen – down 2.2 per cent last
year from the year before. Nevertheless, tuberculosis remains
one of the world’s top