(Panel 2) High-level meeting on the fight against…

Panel 1: Scaling up adequate and sustainable national, regional and international financing to ensure equity in tuberculosis service delivery, innovative strategies, as well as for the research and development of new diagnostics, vaccines and medicines.

• It is well known that funding from international donors is vital to accelerate the TB response, especially for many low- and middle-income countries with a high TB burden. At the same time significant funding gaps remain one the biggest challenges to expand access to quality TB prevention, diagnosis and care. What could be the ways forward and perspectives to address this major resource challenge?
• What innovative financing mechanisms can be leveraged to sustainably address the persistent chronic underfunding for the TB response, including for health workforce and to boost community engagement, both at domestic and international levels?
• To intensify research and development, what are some ways to boost national and international financing required to fast-track the development of rapid tests that can be used at the point of care in community setting, safer and more effective drugs and treatment regimens and other technologies?
• How do we re-think the way we finance and test new vaccines, to ensure their availability/near-availability to patients by the next high-level meeting in 2028?  How can we ensure rapid uptake of new TB vaccines for adults and adolescents, once they are available drawing on lessons from COVID-19 vaccine introduction and scale up?  

Co-chairs: ▪ H.E. Dr. Lia Tedesse, Minister of Health of Ethiopia ▪ H.E. Dr. Alexandru Rafila, Minister of Health of Romania

The meeting will bring together Member States and their delegations including Heads-of-State and other leaders, ministers from relevant ministries, representatives such as parliamentarians, mayors and governors of cities and states with a high burden of tuberculosis, representatives of civil society, including non-governmental organizations and indigenous leadership community organizations and faith-based organizations, academia, philanthropic foundations, the private sector and networks representing people affected by tuberculosis. 

The objective of the meeting is to undertake a comprehensive review of the achievement of agreed tuberculosis goals at the national, regional and global levels contained in the 2018 political declaration, to identify gaps and solutions to accelerate progress towards ending the epidemic by 2030. 

Outcome: The high-level meeting shall approve a concise and action-oriented political declaration, agreed in advance by consensus through intergovernmental negotiations, to be submitted by the President of the General Assembly for adoption by the General Assembly.