8th July 2017, Hamburg, Germany - The G20 Leader’s Summit, which brought together Heads of State from the 20 major economies in Hamburg, Germany, concluded this weekend with strong pledges of action on antimicrobial resistance and tuberculosis (TB).
Building on unprecedented commitments by G20 and BRICS ministers of Health and months of engagement by the TB community, including the Stop TB Partnership Board and our 1600 partner organizations, this is the first time a G20 Heads of State Communique has included TB as a health priority. The communique calls for the creation of 'a new international R&D Collaboration Hub to maximise the impact of existing and new anti-microbial basic and clinical research initiatives as well as product development' and highlights 'the importance of fostering R&D, in particular for priority pathogens as identified by the WHO and tuberculosis.'
"This result shows what can be achieved when the TB community comes together around a shared vision and shows our united strength. We applaud the G20 countries for their leadership and pledges to take strong action on AMR and tuberculosis. Drug-resistant TB is responsible for one-third of the world’s AMR deaths, and the world’s response has been far from adequate, so we must move onwards,” said Dr. Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership.
"The Stop TB Partnership, working with all our partners and colleagues, commit to maximize this high level political commitment and ensuring translation into concrete action on the ground. The impact of political declarations like this and others should ultimately be measured by the number of lives saved. This is why we want to take this further in 2017/18 by ensuring ambitious commitments and accountability towards ending TB in the upcoming BRICS Heads of State meeting in China, the Global Ministerial Conference on TB in Moscow, and in 2018, the Stop TB Partnership Board meeting in New Delhi, the G20 Summit in Argentina and culminating with the UN High-Level Meeting on TB in New York," said Dr. Ditiu.
A new Global Antimicrobial Resistance Collaboration Hub under the leadership of Germany was announced today, which will coordinate efforts to invigorate antimicrobial research and encourage global involvement and investment. The scope of work will cover all stages of the antimicrobial development pipeline, as well as vaccines, alternative therapies and new diagnostic tools. The Global Collaboration Hub will be open to all G20 countries, G20 guest countries and to non-government donors. UK charity Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are among the first to pledge support - more details are available here.
The G20 countries together account for over 50% of global TB cases and nearly 50% of TB deaths.
The Full G20 Leader's Communique can be viewed here.