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www.results.org / Global Action
March 2012

Take Action! Urge Congress to Support Funding To Fight Tuberculosis

March 24 is World TB Day, a time to raise awareness of tuberculosis and build support for the tools to fight it. The date marks the announcement by Dr. Robert Koch in 1882 that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB. In 2012, TB is still very much with us, and there are daunting challenges to conquering the disease. However, there are exciting new breakthroughs and opportunities that make this an important turning point in the fight against this ancient disease.

US Funding for Tuberculosis: Global Fund and USAID TB (bilateral)

In 2008 Congress passed the bipartisan Lantos-Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria Act, which authorized $4 billion and a bold new plan to fight TB and other diseases. The foreign aid funding bill, known as the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, is the most important annual opportunity to increase resources for improving the health and livelihood of the poor – including funding to fight tuberculosis. Each and every member of Congress can have an important voice in shaping this bill by writing to and speaking with committee leadership before they begin drafting the spending legislation.

FY2012 Enacted / FY13 President’s Request / FY13 RESULTS’ Request
USAID TB (bilateral) / $236 million / $224 million / $650 million
Global Fund / $1.3 billion / $1.65 billion / $1.65 billion

FY2013 Request: Provide $650 million for scaling up critical U.S. supported efforts to control TB. USAID bilateral assistance strengthens TB control in endemic countries, supports research and development of new tools to fight the disease, and help countries access and implement Global Fund grants.

FY2013 Request: $1.65 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. The Global Fund provides over two-thirds of all donor financing to fight TB. Since its creation in 2001, the Global Fund has supported the treatment of 8.6 million TB cases, as well as providing AIDS treatment for 3.3 million people and distributing 230 million insecticide treated bednets to prevent malaria. An allocation of $1.65 billion would fulfill the U.S. historic three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund.

Take Action! Write a Letter to Your Senators and Representatives

1.  Introduce yourself as a RESULTS volunteer and a constituent. Acknowledge any actions that your member has already taken on global health and poverty and thank him/her.
2.  Urge your representative/senator to write and to with the chair and ranking member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations in support TB funding in the FY2013 foreign aid funding bill. Members of Congress submit requests to the Appropriations Committee, so ask them to include these programs as priorities.
3.  Sample Letter:
Dear Senator/Representative______:
·  I am a member of RESULTS and a constituent. Thank you for your support for ______.
·  Next, include some of the key challenges and opportunities in the fight against TB described in this action sheet, and personalize your letter explaining why you care about this issue.
·  The Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee will soon be considering spending levels for the FY2013 foreign aid spending bill. Please write to the leadership of this subcommittee and request that they support funding to fight TB in their bill. Specifically, ask them to include $1.65 billion for the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and $650 million for bilateral efforts to control tuberculosis.
4.  Request a reply and include all of your contact information. If you don’t know the aide that handles foreign aid, call the office and ask. Please e-mail and fax your letter if possible. Call and make sure the aide that handles these issues received your letter. For contact information, go to the RESULTS website: http://capwiz.com/results/dbq/officials/.

World TB Day 2012: Challenges and Opportunities in the Fight Against TB

The Challenge / The Opportunity
Drug Resistant Tuberculosis / TB is usually curable with low-cost medication, but resistance to anti-TB drugs can develop when these drugs are misused or mismanaged. The results are multi drug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR). Recently there have been reports of TDR-TB –an untreatable strain of “totally drug-resistant TB”.
About 650,000 cases of MDR-TB were reported in the world in 2010, however it is estimated that many more cases were simply unreported. Incredibly, less than 5% of TB patients globally are being tested for drug resistance, and of the patients with confirmed cases of MDR TB only 16% were given appropriate treatment. / Fortunately, a new means of rapidly diagnosing TB and detecting drug resistance is now available, the GeneXpert machine. It can diagnose TB among people who are HIV positive and also indicate whether the TB is resistant to one of the most important TB drugs, rifampicin. It provides an accurate diagnosis within about 90 minutes. That’s a huge advance, since other methods can take weeks to provide a result, during which time a patient could be passing the infection to others. Hundreds of machines are now in use in South Africa, Kenya and other countries, and the cost will come as more countries scale-up use of this new technology.
TB-HIV Co-infection / People living with HIV/AIDS are very vulnerable to infections that take advantage of their weakened immune systems. One of the most serious is tuberculosis, which is the single biggest killer of people living with HIV/AIDS. Africa is especially hard hit. The mortality rate from HIV-related TB is more than 20 times higher in Africa than in other world regions. One contributing factor is that TB is often more difficult to detect in people living with HIV, and the infection can often be outside the lungs. / The world has begun to wake up to the enormous threat posed by TB to people living with HIV infection. The World Health Organization just announced that in the past six years approximately 910,000 lives have been saved worldwide thanks to improved collaboration between HIV and TB services. The number of people with HIV screened for TB increased from nearly 200,000 in 2005 to more than 2.3 million people in 2010. But we can do even better. If we ramp up access to TB services we can save an additional one million lives by 2015.
New Tools to Fight TB / We need new tools to fight TB: simpler, faster drug regimens, more accurate diagnostic tools to quickly detect TB; and a much more effective vaccine. Today’s most commonly used TB diagnostic method (sputum microscopy) is more than 100 years old, and detects only half of the world’s new TB patients. TB drugs are more than 40 years old and must be taken for 6-9 months. The BCG vaccine against TB, which is more than 85 years old, is unreliable against pulmonary TB in adults, which accounts for most of the worldwide disease burden. / In addition to the progress made in improved diagnostic tests like GeneXpert, continued investments are yielding progress in the research and development of new drugs and vaccines. The TB Alliance is developing new affordable TB drugs that will dramatically shorten treatment time, work against drug-resistant TB, be compatible with HIV antiretroviral treatment, and improve the treatment of latent TB. And initial results are expected next year from a trial of a promising new vaccine to prevent TB.

For information on RESULTS Appropriations requests, please visit: http://www.results.org/issues/global_poverty_campaigns/appropriations/