Moscow Times: Ending Tuberculosis Starts in Moscow
José Luis Castro, executive director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), and Michel Kazatchkine, U.N. secretary general’s special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

“A meeting of the world’s health ministers in Moscow this week could prove to be a pivotal moment on the road to ending tuberculosis (TB). … But a potential new regime of TB science will also need to be matched by effective implementation on the ground. That will mean some fundamental changes and reforms in the way that TB care is delivered in many parts of the world, including in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where TB care remains largely hospital-based rather than decentralized to primary health care structures. How to fund and implement those changes while also driving the search for new diagnostic tools, drugs, and vaccines that treat TB will be a focus of discussions this week in Moscow. How seriously thereafter the world’s leaders take TB as a health crisis that needs prioritizing we shall discover at the first-ever United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB, to be held in September 2018. Eliminating TB will not be easy but neither is it impossible … This week the TB community needs a strong dose of sensible talk leading into long-term meaningful action. Eastern Europe, home to the world’s fastest growing HIV and MDR-TB epidemics, seems a good place to start” (11/16).