26 AUGUST 2005 | MAPUTO -- The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee for Africa comprising health ministers from 46 Member States has declared tuberculosis an emergency in the African region - a response to an epidemic that has more than quadrupled the annual number of new TB cases in most African countries since 1990 and is continuing to rise across the continent, killing more than half a million people every year.
The declaration was made in a resolution adopted today at the end of the Committee's fifty-fifth session in Maputo, Mozambique. The resolution urges Member States in the African Region to commit more human and financial resources to strengthen DOTS programmes and scale up collaborative interventions to fight the co-epidemic of TB and HIV. These and other measures recommended by the Committee encompass those laid out in a "blueprint" developed by the global Stop TB Partnership, which calls for US $2.2 billion in new funding for TB control in Africa during 2006-2007.
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