Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment he has made of the effect on identification of tuberculosis cases of the (a) WHO Global Tuberculosis Report published on 17 October 2019 and (b) Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's Strategy 2017-2022.

Millions of tuberculosis cases continue to go undiagnosed and untreated each year – identifying these is essential to ending the tuberculosis epidemic, which killed 1.5 million people globally in 2018. We are pleased to note the improvement in the number of cases of tuberculosis identified as confirmed by the World Health Organisation Global Tuberculosis Report published on 17 October. 7 million people with tuberculosis were identified globally in 2018, including 600,000 more people than in 2017.

The Global Fund has played an important part in this improvement. A joint initiative between the Global Fund, the Stop TB Partnership and the World Health Organisation aims to accelerate progress in finding people with tuberculosis in 13 countries with the highest disease burden. In these countries, by the end of 2018, already more than 800,000 additional patients were found and treated, compared with the baseline of 2015.

The UK remains fully committed to achieving the targets set out in the World Health Organisation End Tuberculosis Strategy, recently pledging £1.4 billion to the Sixth Replenishment of the Global Fund.