This is my generation. Did you know that today, for the first time in history, we have the power to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria? When The Who first sang the aforementioned song, no one had heard of AIDS, but tuberculosis, on the other hand, had been around for thousands of years.
TB is woven into the fabric of our humanity, from the Bible to opera to those bothersome ads on TV that do not allow us to forget that some of our brothers and sisters still live in abject poverty and cannot fight this scourge on their own.
Canada is actually one of the darlings of the world when it comes to TB. We stand alone as the only country thus far funding TB Reach, a proven initiative for diagnosing the hardest to reach and the hardest to diagnose cases of TB and even DR-TB (drug-resistant TB).
Over the past five years, TB Reach has provided grants to 145 projects across 36 countries, with a number of these projects working to implement new, innovative ways of integrating TB and HIV health care in order to tackle both diseases together.
It is time to renew our support to the fight against TB by pledging $120 million over five years to TB Reach. Let’s make this a historic generation – the generation that finally eradicates TB.
Connie Lebeau
Victoria
