It is not natural disasters (like hurricanes or storms) which block access to TB care services most times, but manmade barriers that fuel injustices, inequities, greed, and risk factors that put people at risk of TB disease and death.

Since these are manmade barriers, it is we who have to unmake them if we are to walk the talk on the promise to end TB and deliver on sustainable development ‘where no one is left behind’. There is no other choice because it is a human rights imperative to end TB and deliver on #HealthForAll and #SDGs. And there is no excuse for inaction as clock is ticking: Only 21 months left to end TB in India, and 81 months left to end TB globally (by 2030).

“Like justice, health is never given, it is won,” said a media release by United Nations joint programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on International Women’s Day.

But if justice and equality can become centre-stage in our world – from the point-of-view of the least served, least represented and least visible communities – and if they are served first with respect and equity, then perhaps we can avert a social uprising to get a just access to health and development for everyone. But then this is a big ‘but’!

“We have allowed inequities to mar the TB response,” said Dr Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of Stop TB Partnership. Old TB guidelines of the past years will show how drug-resistant TB, or TB in children were on the blindspot in the Global South. Even data of TB in children for example has started coming forward from high TB burden nations only since the past decade. But richer nations of the Global North were diagnosing and treating drug-resistant TB, TB in children or extrapulmonary TB (TB of body parts other than lungs). “We cannot have double standards,” rightly said Dr Lucica Ditiu, who was speaking at the 2024 World Social Forum (WSF 2024) in Nepal. Since Dr Ditiu has taken charge of the global Stop TB Partnership in Geneva in 2011, TB guidelines are uniform for rich and poor nations alike.

But are we finding TB, treating TB and preventing TB everywhere with the best of tools science has gifted us? Why is 140 years old microscopy still being used in high TB burden nations to screen and diagnose TB? Why are older, longer, less effective, more toxic treatment regimens still being used? Why is TB prevention on the backseat?

Preventing people with latent TB from progressing to active TB disease is possible with the best of available treatments and complemented with nutrition, along with ending tobacco and alcohol, and preventing diabetes, other non-communicable diseases,........

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