“Tuberculosis patients have the RIGHT to be rid of their debilitating disease, regardless of their status, gender, or financial resources.”

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Why?

Millions

Think for a moment. Millions of children and young adults dying of tuberculosis (TB). Millions more suffering, recovering, sometimes relapsing into TB or multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). And so many HIV-positive people falling sick and dying of TB.

Such is the case today –from Johannesburg to the poor districts of Beijing or Moscow.

Such is the case in the developing world.

But how can people be “developing” when TB maintains them in utter poverty? When laborers, farmers, teachers are struck down by TB, and by AIDS which starts with TB, undermining their fragile economies?

DOTS cures TB

Let me remind you:

There is a simple CURE FOR TB. We all know that Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course (DOTS)works, that if we were to apply it on a global scale, efficiently, we could envision the eradication of TB. What does it mean NOT to do it? It means that MDR-TB will spring up everywhere, and that is what we face today.

DOTS delays AIDS

In developing countries, AIDS first manifests itself through TB. Curing TB is therefore also the single most efficient intervention that would lengthen the life of HIV affected people, significantly delay the onset of AIDS, and even slow down the spread of the epidemic. It would help us keep our HIV-positive teachers, nurses, infants, parents, our loved ones... a few more years. Perhaps then there might also be a cure–a vaccine–for AIDS?

But we have known for some years now that we could treat and cure TB. We spoke about the necessity of DOTS last year for World TB Day. So why aren’t we doing it? What’s holding us back?

Do we care about TB for only one day a year?

Pricing? DOTS is the cheapest health intervention imaginable.

Poverty? TB is the child of poverty but also its parent and provider.

I had TB as a child. President Mandela had TB as a prisoner.

We recovered. There is life after tuberculosis.

Development is a process of change. But to achieve development people need to be healthy. Poverty breeds tuberculosis, tuberculosis breeds poverty. As Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the Director-General of WHO, has said that TB and MDR-TB are global problems demanding not just efficient health services but all the developmental plus which can allow for people to uplift themselves.

So everybody agrees, even the G8: DOTS is cheap, efficient,and it works. DOTS should be implemented along with poverty alleviation. DOTS would allow us to eradicate TB and make this planet a better place to live.

Curing TB would give true meaning to the call for the rights of women. We should not forget that women tend to the sick, the young,the fragile. Women are care givers in health centres and care givers in the community or at home. If we don’t guarantee the rights of women to access efficient means to cure TB, we are adding an insurmountable burden to the backs of poor women.

So why aren’t we doing it?

2000 years ago Christ on the Cross asked: “Why has thou forsaken me?” What could we tell that child sick with TB asking us that question “WHY?” “Why has thou abandoned me?”

Why?

WE DON ‘T RESPECT THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF HUMAN BEINGS!

Access to TB treatment and cure for all is a fundamental human right.

Tuberculosis patients have the RIGHT to be rid of their debilitating disease, regardless of their status, gender, or financial resources. People have the right to live without fear of contracting the disease.

HOW CAN WE GUARANTEE THE RIGHT TO THE CURE FOR TB?

User fees must never be imposed that would represent a barrier to treatment. This has even been voted this past fall by the US Congress as applicable to all international lending institutions. The human right to treatment and cure must of necessity include provision of sufficient resources for health care structures,drug supplies, distribution mechanisms, community care and education–and must be included in international and national economic policy planning as well as in North–South lending and foreign assistance arrangements.

I call upon all citizens, all patients and health care givers to be the watchdogs for the respect of that fundamental human right at all levels of policy-making.

If we can achieve that human right, then, and only then, will we be able to lift that child, OUR CHILD.