October 2007: Stop TB Now ActIn Brief: The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee both unanimously passed the Stop TB Now Act of 2007 (H.R.1567, S.968), which was introduced in the House by Representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY), Adam Smith (D-WA), and Heather Wilson (R-NM) and in the Senate by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Dick Durbin (D-IL). The Stop TB Now Act calls for the U.S. to commit the funds and put in place the policies necessary to implement the World Health Organization’s Global Plan to Stop TB and achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving TB deaths and disease by 2015. Resources provided by the bill will expand and enhance basic TB treatment, as well as provide treatment for individuals infected with both tuberculosis and HIV and treatment for individuals with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The act authorizes $400 million overall in fiscal year 2008 and $550 million in fiscal year 2009, with $70 million of the total in fiscal year 2008 and $100 million in fiscal year 2009 to carry out global tuberculosis activities through the Centers for Disease Control. It also authorizes increased resources to the WHO and the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership to improve the capacity of countries with high TB rates and other affected countries implement the Stop TB Strategy and address drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). Congress must ensure that the Stop TB Now Act is passed this year. Representatives and senators must cosponsor the bill and urge leadership to bring it to a vote on the floor.
BackgroundEvery 20 seconds, someone dies of TB. The disease claims 1.6 million lives each year. The fight against TB is closely tied with the fight against AIDS, because TB is the number one infectious killer of people living with HIV/AIDS. The deadly synergy between TB and HIV/AIDS has been highlighted by Nelson Mandela: “TB is too often a death sentence for people with AIDS,” Mandela said. “Today we are calling on the world to recognize that we can’t fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB as well.”[1] Yet resources devoted to TB are a tiny fraction of those devoted to high-profile diseases such as AIDS and avian flu. Despite the deadly co-infection rates of TB and HIV/AIDS, the majority of those living with AIDS are not being screened for TB. TB treatment, however, can also be an opportunity in the fight against AIDS. Providing HIV testing in TB clinics is one of the best ways to help determine HIV status and to keep people with HIV/AIDS alive by getting them access to life-saving anti-retrovirals. Without effective TB control we will not only see millions of unnecessary deaths from this completely curable killer, we will see a rise in drug-resistant TB. The recent identification of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), now found in 40 countries — including the U.S. — has demonstrated the consequences of neglecting TB. Drug-resistant TB occurs when standard TB is incompletely or ineffectively treated, usually as a result of insufficient resources to properly monitor and treat patients undergoing drug treatment regimens. Increased funding for countries with high TB rates would boost health systems and prevent the development of more drug-resistant strains. XDR-TB is very dangerous, and mortality rates for people who are co-infected with HIV/AIDS and XDR-TB are extremely high, warning us that XDR-TB’s unchecked spread threatens to roll back progress made in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The extent of the epidemic is relatively unknown, since many African countries lack the capacity to even find and treat people with XDR-TB. According to Center for Global Development, XDR-TB is ranked as the second most important global health issue for 2007 (after bird flu). Because TB is an airborne disease, it presents a danger to all countries. Investing in stopping the spread of TB abroad is far less expensive than waiting to respond to outbreaks in the U.S. Recent reports have shown that the U.S. is ill-prepared to contain an outbreak of an infectious disease like TB. An outbreak of multidrug-resistant TB in New York City in the early 1990s cost the city $1 billion to contain and treat the disease in only 300 individuals. Conversely, it costs only $100 per person to treat and prevent standard TB in developing countries, with only $16 of that devoted to standard TB drugs. What Should the U.S. Congress Do?Congress must ensure that the Stop TB Now Act is passed this year. Representatives and senators must cosponsor the bill and urge leadership to bring it to a vote on the floor. How is the Stop TB Now Act Different from the Appropriations Bill for FY08?The Stop TB Now Act is authorizing legislation, which serves to create, continue, or alter an agency or program for a time; lay out the responsibilities, the organizational structure, and the function of an agency or program; authorize a specific amount of money that may be appropriated to an agency or program. Authorizing legislation does not actually appropriate (give out) money, but can set a spending limit for a program or agency. Authorizing legislation is introduced by any member of Congress before it undergoes the complex process of being passed into law. Consideration of this type of legislation is therefore separate from the federal budget process, which is the process by which money is appropriated for the coming fiscal year. The State/Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill funds global TB programs, as well as most of our global issues. While supporting the funding levels called for in the Stop TB Now Act, RESULTS is also working to influence the Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08) appropriations process for TB. Our partners are urging their representatives and senators to support the highest possible level of funding for global TB in FY08. Read more about these processes under “Background on the Legislative Process” under “Activist Info” on our website. Additional ResourcesTB exists in every one of our states. You can find data about TB in your state at: http://bluewinkle.com/ntca/respro_tbsites RESULTS online fact sheet on the Stop TB Now Act [1] Fifteenth International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, 15 July 2004, http://www.aids2004.org/mainpage.aspx?pageId=291 |