On Wednesday, the Stop TB Partnership launched an ambitious new plan to end tuberculosis by 2030, which includes the approval of a new TB vaccine by 2025.
The plan requires raising $250 billion — a significant challenge for a disease that has been chronically underfunded. In 2020, global spending for TB sat at $5.3 billion, a decline of 8.7% from 2019 and far from the $13 billion that United Nations member states committed to mobilize annually during a 2018 meeting.
At a virtual launch event for the plan, Stop TB Partnership Executive Director Lucica Ditiu said the necessary money could be raised if the global community has a “desire” to do so. The requested amount is equivalent to $4 annually from every person in the world for the next seven years, according to the Stop TB Partnership. This is “not unaffordable”, Ditiu said, in exchange for ending a disease that kills more than 4,000 people every day, 700 of whom are children.
She added that the investment will help not just to end TB but also strengthen countries’ health systems, improving their capacity to respond to other airborne infections.
According to the plan, funding will need to come from multiple sources. In 2020, 81% of the total funding available for TB came from domestic resources. Ditiu said bilateral donors will continue to play an important role in funding, as will the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which provides the bulk of international donor funding for TB.
Of the $250 billion ask, $157.2 billion is for TB prevention and care. Meanwhile, $52.6 billion is for immunizations when new vaccines become available. The remaining $40.2 billion is for accelerating the development of new TB medicines, treatment regimens, and diagnostics. This includes a proposed investment of $10 billion in TB vaccines, which the plan hopes will be available by 2025.
The only TB vaccine that is currently licensed — named Bacille Calmette-Guérin — has demonstrated limited benefit.
Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, the director of the World Health Organization’s Global Tuberculosis Programme, said 14 of the most promising vaccine candidates are currently in clinical trials, four of which are in the advanced stage of development. A trial for one candidate, known as M72/AS01E, showed 54% efficacy among HIV-negative adults infected with TB.
Thus, it’s possible to have a new TB vaccine by 2025, Kasaeva and Ditiu said. But that requires money and the political will to push things forward.
“There's a political reason why it hasn't happened yet. And I think this is where the global plan can help with the advocacy that has been lacking,” said Dr. Paula Fujiwara, the chair of a task force for the new plan.
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