On Tuesday 11 July, Parliament held a debate on the upcoming United Nations High-Level Meetings on TB, Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Pandemic Preparedness and Response (PPR).
The debate was called by APPG Co-Chair Virendra Sharma MP and offered an opportunity for MPs to question the Government on their approach to the upcoming HLMs, including who will attend on the FCDO’s behalf and how the Government has been engaging with other nations on the post-meeting Political Decleration.
Virendra Sharma opened the debate with an impassioned defence of the global fight to eradciate TB. Significant progress has been made in the last two decades on driving down global levels of TB, but the Covid-19 pandemic has had an outsized impact on the treatment and delivery of TB services. If the international community are going to eradicate TB by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), then more needs to be done by all governments to fund the necessary medical interventions and cultivate the political will desperately needed to eradicate TB once and for all.
The TB High-Level Meeting will be held on September 24th in New York City alongside the United Nations General Assembly.