Union Conference

Members of RESULTS International (Australia) have just returned from the 43rd World Conference of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (the Union), hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was an action packed week filled with technical briefings, planning for the future fight against TB, collaborative meetings and advocacy workshops. The resounding message from the week, looking forward to the post-Millennium Development Goal era, was for bold policies and ambitious targets.

The Union conference, held annually, is the peak global event for people working in lung health and tuberculosis (TB), and brings together hundreds of participants from more than 120 countries. Participants range from academics and researchers, civil society advocates and affected community representatives to members of governments, NGOs and policy makers.

The heart of advocacy activities at the conference was the Advocacy Corner, jointly hosted by Action.org, the Stop TB Partnership and TB Alert. The Corner provided a space for civil society advocates to meet, share ideas and knowledge, and to strategize and coordinate actions. Additionally, the Advocacy Corner was the location of a number of workshops and presentations, such as an Action hosted workshop aimed at researchers, providing information on how they can utilise advocacy in and alongside their work.

The outstanding event of the conference was the first ever civil society protest to occur at a Union conference. Frustrated by the unambitious targets for reducing TB, lack of commitment for funding targets, and with the stigmatising language frequently used in reference to persons with TB, more than 100 activists marched through the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, landing at the opening ceremony. 

The group carried signs of protest, such as ‘50% won’t cut it’, condemning the current aim to cut TB deaths by 50% by 2025, noting that this target will result in more than 600 000 people still dying each year, and ‘nothing for us without us’, in reference to the need to more effectively engage civil society in discussions and planning. Other signs included words crossed out in red, like ‘suspect’ and ‘defaulter’, condemning the language commonly used to describe persons thought to have TB and persons with TB who don’t finish the full regimen of treatment, respectively. Throughout the crowd were signs of ‘zero’, calling for an ambitious target to stop entirely this curable disease.

The crowd of activists, made up of people from dozens of countries from around the world `chanted, sang, stomped their feet and danced, and brought a much needed energy to the conference, revitalising the conversation at a crucial time, when planning is under way for the targets that will replace the MDGs in 2015. 

The week of activities culminated in the presentation at the closing ceremony of the first ever civil society Declaration on TB. The Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Tuberculosis spells out the aspirations that informed the week’s advocacy activities and the principles and demands that will guide TB advocacy efforts into the future. 

To read the declaration, click here: 

To add your signature to the declaration email KLZerodeclaration@gmail.com with your name, organizational affiliation (if any), city and country of residence and email address.

Tuberculosis: Child killer

TUBERCULOSIS kills 64,000 children each year.  

TB preys on the most vulnerable young people – the orphaned, the malnourished, even those living with HIV. It causes an almost unimaginable burden to victims and their families and what makes this situation more abhorrent, TB is entirely preventable and curable.

This week international global health advocacy partnership, ACTION, of which RESULTS Australia is a part, released its Children and TB report, Children & TB:From Neglect to Action, which highlights the lack of awareness that remains around childhood TB.

Alarmingly, children are still misdiagnosed, unaccounted for, and lack access to appropriate lifesaving drugs.

The report makes a number of recommendations to countries that have donated funds to child survival initiatives and for high burden countries affected by TB to do more to stem the scourge of TB.

ACTION believes more funding for programs that address childhood TB should be made available to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria.

ACTION also recommends that countries that are affected by TB should improve their National TB programs by appropriately collecting and reporting on childhood TB data.

More importantly, they also suggest that Governments should increase funding for their own TB programs, including training and supporting health workers.

“This report goes a long way in identifying the problems that we have in trying to combat tuberculosis,” RESULTS Chief Executive Officer Maree Nutt said.

“The solutions are right there in black and white. What’s required from us is the public and poltical will to act on these recommendations,” Ms Nutt continued.

The report also notes that the lack of awareness of the child-killing disease by developed countries remains a persistent and significant barrier from defeating it.  "200 children are dying of TB every day. Most people do not know this," Archbishop Desmond Tutu said.
 
RESULTS is committed in increasing the awareness of this deadly disease.

"Whether you live in the developed or developing world, TB can end a child’s life so unexpectedly wherever you may live,” Ms Nutt added.

“John F. Kennedy once said that children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future. 

“If tuberculosis continues to kill young people, then our future looks bleak,”Ms Nutt said.

Malaria

by Marita Jones, RESULTS member, Tasmania

Being a Hobartian by birth it is easy to believe that diseases like malaria should be no more relevant to me then remembering to take anti-malarials when I go on my summer holidays. But this disease, that still affects 200 million people around the world every year and causes major mortality, especially in the vulnerable, is more relevant to us than we realise.

Marita Jones - RESULTS member, junior doctor and guest blogger.

I work as a junior doctor in the local emergency department and recently a woman came in very sick with fevers and hallucinations. She had been travelling to Bangladesh where her young child fell sick, so she had to spend 5 days with him in the local hospital. She was exposed to every possible disease, as she did not want to be separated from her sick child. We found out a few days later when results came back that she had been exposed to malaria and typhoid fever. During her 6 hours in the department numerous staff members, children and elderly people were put at risk.

Communicable diseases such as malaria, typhoid and TB do not respect borders and disease outbreaks in regions close to Australia, particularly drug resistant strains, pose a real threat to us all. 42,000 people in the Asia-Pacific region died from malaria in 2010. An increase in malaria cases in Australia, where we would be slow to diagnose, as it is uncommon, could be disastrous especially for children under 5 years old, who are most vulnerable to dying.

Malaria is not only deadly, but it also means lost income for parents and lost ability to go to school for children. Other than direct health impact the disease burden in the Asia-Pacific region affects Australia in many other ways. For example, as a trade and tourism partner and as an inhibitor for countries in the region to become self-sufficient and less reliant on Australian aid. Many Australian citizens are from countries with rampant malaria and their families still suffer.

The good news is malaria deaths have been cut by 26% since 2000. This is largely due to treatment and prevention programmes run by governments and funded through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

There is much that can be done:

• Appropriate diagnosis and treatment of malaria with artemisinin, the affordable most effective drug
• Widespread use of insecticide treated bed nets
• Education about the early signs of malaria so families can seek medical care
• Education about prevention such as covering open water sources or avoiding water collections after rain where the mosquitoes breed 

Tasmanian researchers from the Menzies Research Institute are playing their part, doing very special work to find new treatments strategies to fight malaria and genetic susceptibility to disease and resistance^[1].

I am proud that AusAID hosted Malaria 2012 in Sydney recently, and applaud the announcement of an additional $100 million of funding to scale up the response to the disease in the region.

Malaria is a great example of an international disease with local relevance and we can all be a part of the target to reduce malaria cases and deaths in the Asia-Pacific by 75% by 2015. 

Well done Australia.

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^[1] http://www.menzies.utas.edu.au/information.php?Doo=ViewData&type=Disease&ID=21