FIND statement at the multi-stakeholder hearing on Tuberculosis

Multi-stakeholder hearings in preparation of the General Assembly High-level Meetings on the fight against Tuberculosis, Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response and Universal Health Coverage

8-9 May 2023, Trusteeship Council Chamber, United Nations Headquarters, New York

Every year, millions of people with TB are not diagnosed or notified to health systems – resulting in millions of preventable deaths. For the last two decades, FIND has been working on the development, delivery and scale up of diagnostic solutions that are urgently needed to defeat this deadly disease.

In line with the Global Plan to End TB (2023-2030), the 2023 UN HLM key targets and commitments must prioritize the development of:

• Rapid, affordable tests for diagnosis or triage that do not rely on sputum and are used at the point of care.
• Accurate drug susceptibility testing for critical medicines, including through sequencing-based tests and strategies for early detection of resistance to the medicines used in regimens.
• Tools for detecting TB infection, subclinical TB and testing for risk of progression to active disease.
• Digital health technologies geared to the needs of the most neglected, key and vulnerable populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on the fight against TB rolling back progress towards the 2018 UN HLM key targets, but it unlocked a wave of technological progress that can in the case of TB enable critical testing tools to be used in primary care and community settings, where people first access health systems.
It is essential that these new tools meet the needs of those who will be using them, and that requires civil society and affected communities to be involved in their creation. Our DriveDx4TB project is doing just that as we are working with Unitaid to strengthen community-based testing, by increasing TB testing options and evaluating new, less invasive sampling methods to accurately diagnose more people and connect them to care.

Finally, diagnostics receive only a small share of global health R&D funding. We require a coordinated approach to mobilize at least US$1 billion per year for TB diagnostics R&D.