USAID Honors Philippines as Champion in the Global Fight against TB

Nearly a thousand tuberculosis (TB) service providers and advocates representing workplaces, schools, jails and prisons, national government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, non-government organizations, professional societies, donor agencies, and DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course) facilities observed World TB Day 2015 in Batangas City  in a show of commitment to reach, find, and cure all TB cases.  As a highlight of the event, USAID/Philippines Mission Director Gloria D. Steele handed over the USAID TB Champion Award to Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Janette L. Garin in recognition of the Philippines’ outstanding work in the fight against TB. The DOH’s strong leadership has led to an impressive nationwide scale-up of quality treatment of TB in adults and children that enabled the country to achieve – three years ahead of the 2015 deadline – the Millennium Development Goals target of cutting by half TB prevalence and mortality rates from the 1990 baseline. In the same event, Mission Director Steele accepted Johnson & Johnson’s symbolic turnover of bedaquiline drug donation to USAID. Bedaquiline is a new drug that can be used in combination with other drugs when existing regimens to treat multidrug-resistant TB are not working. The National TB Control Program estimates that 430,000 Filipinos have active TB and about 8,500 have multidrug-resistant TB. Economic losses due to TB illness and premature death are valued at PhP8 billion ($182 million) annually.

Governor Vilma Santos-Recto of Batangas, the World TB Day host province, urged everyone to work as partners in eradicating TB. “The fight against TB is not the fight of the infected person only but the fight of the whole community,” she stressed. (Photo: JMangalus/PBSP)

USAID Mission Director Gloria D. Steele hands over to Department of Health Secretary Janette L. Garin the USAID TB Champion award for the Philippines’ outstanding work in the global fight against TB. (Photo: JMangalus/PBSP)