Heads of State gathered in New York on 26 September this year at the United Nations General Assembly first-ever high-level meeting on tuberculosis (TB) to accelerate efforts in ending TB and reach all affected people with prevention and care. The theme of this historic meeting was “United to end tuberculosis: an urgent global response to a global epidemic”.
The high-level meeting on TB is a tremendous and unprecedented step forward by governments and all partners engaged in the fight against TB. It follows on from a very successful Ministerial Conference on Ending TB in Moscow on 16-17 November, 2017 which resulted in high-level commitments from Ministers and other leaders from 120 countries to accelerate progress to end TB.
The high-level meeting should result in an ambitious Political Declaration on TB endorsed by Heads of State that will strengthen action and investments for the end TB response, saving millions of lives.
The International Commission for Occupational Health (ICOH) was happy to confirm that “thanks to an intense year of effort by ICOH, IOHA and other partners, our suggested language related to workers is successfully included in this endorsed Declaration. When viewing the declaration, see Paragraph 17, which identifies ”health care workers, miners and others exposed to silica” as high-risk vulnerable groups. Also see Paragraph 31, which says: “Commit to… implementing primary prevention in high-risk occupations by reducing silica dust exposures in mining, construction and other dusty workplaces, and worker tuberculosis surveillance and infection prevention and control in healthcare settings”.
The rationale and some of the many efforts leading to this success are summarized at http://www.icohweb.org/site/news-detail.asp?id=152