World TB Day 2017

EDM number 1070 in 2016-17, proposed by Virendra Kumar Sharma on 15/03/2017.
Categorised under the topics of Communicable diseases, Health education and preventive medicine, Health services and Medicine.

That this House recognises that 24 March 2017 marks World TB Day; notes that TB is the world's leading infectious killer, resulting in 1.8 million deaths per year; commends the Government's efforts to address TB at home through the introduction of the first Collaborative TB Strategy for England in 2015, and abroad through its significant contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in 2016; further notes, however, that new tools are urgently needed to end the epidemic and that without research and development for TB diagnostics, drugs and vaccines, the Sustainable Development Goals target to the TB epidemic by 2030 will not be met; further recognises that the long course of TB treatment and the side effects it can entail are a major driver of the epidemic and exacerbate the issue of drug-resistant TB; notes that the independent Review on Antimicrobial Resistance found that if left unaddressed by 2050, drug-resistant TB will be responsible for a quarter of antimicrobial deaths with cumulative economic costs of 16.7 trillion US dollars; notes that the review called for TB and drug-resistant TB to be at the heart of any global action on antimicrobial resistance; recognises that TB could be used as a pathfinder for developing antibiotics to address antimicrobial resistance and that TB drugs are often used to treat other infections; and calls on the Government to work with partners to secure the development of the new tools that are needed to end the TB epidemic.

This motion has been signed by a total of 36 MPs.