Tuberculosis

Debate between Lord Hain and Nicholas Dakin

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin]

Thank you, Mr Dobbin, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I am sure that the Minister will reflect on his point when he responds to the debate. It reinforces the point that I made earlier about the importance of the Government taking the opportunity to co-ordinate their efforts in relation to both HIV and TB, and the Minister will have heard those points.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that 750,000 TB cases—the most lethal ones—come from South Africa’s gold mines, and contribute 9% of the global total of TB cases, which are often linked to HIV? If so, does he agree that it is vital for the British Government to talk to British-owned companies that are mining gold in South Africa to try to resolve that terrible epidemic?

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right that the Government have a leadership role to play both globally and in relation to British companies involved in South Africa and elsewhere. I am sure that the Minister will also pick up on that point when he responds to the debate.

Dr Raviglione said that it would take more than a century to get rid of TB. Waiting a hundred years to get rid of this disease is just not good enough. Dr Raviglione also drew attention to the shameful fact that one in every three TB cases on the planet is not properly diagnosed or treated, which equates to 3 million people every year going undiagnosed, the majority of whom will have infectious pulmonary TB. Many of them are estimated to have drug-resistant strains. That is 3 million people a year going undiagnosed for the past six years—that is not good enough, either. Until everyone in the world with TB is diagnosed and correctly treated, we will never succeed in bringing the global TB epidemic under control and it will continue to blight our world, ruining millions of lives every year.

TB has killed more people than every other pandemic in history combined, by a margin of several hundred million. It is a global disease of the here and now. It affects every country, and every country must have a role to play in tackling it. It requires global leadership from our Government and every other Government. Tackling it requires support and investment through multilateral organisations such as the global health fund, as well as through targeted interventions. We need important technical and co-ordinating agencies, such as the WHO’s global TB programme and the Stop TB Partnership, to work together to enhance co-operation and cohesion across the world’s responses to TB. We need the brightest and the best of the scientific and business communities to work with high-burden countries, in order to step up the fight against this disease and save as many lives as possible.

Consumption, or TB, is a disease of the present. It is a scourge on our humanity and deserves the full force of all our efforts. Although new tools to tackle HIV and TB are badly needed, if we scale up the use of the tools that are already available we have the opportunity to save an additional million lives in the next few years.

I hope that the Minister, when he responds to the debate, will take the opportunity to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to ensuring full replenishment of the global health fund; to continuing to fund TB REACH to a level that allows it to carry on supporting new and innovative projects to find “the missing 3 million”; and to continuing to push for the development and uptake of better diagnosis, treatment and prevention treatments for TB, in a way that can be sustainable.

Finally, let us recognise the work done by all those people across the globe on the front line of the fight against this terrible disease. Their effort is a call to arms for us and a call for us, as policy makers, to step up to the mark and provide them with the tools and the wherewithal to eradicate TB and place it firmly in the past.