TB RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS AND WORLD TB DAY ON 24 MARCH

That this House recognises the ongoing research in the global fight against tuberculosis (TB) being undertaken by the Division of Infection and Global Health at the University of St Andrews School of Medicine; notes that poverty, public health infrastructure breakdown and the global HIV pandemic caused a major upsurge in cases of TB during the 1990s and early 2000s and that in 2016 there were still 10.4 million new cases of the disease worldwide with 1.8 million deaths; further notes that, in 2015, the World Health Organisation launched a new End-TB strategy with the ambitious aim of eliminating TB as a public health problem by 2035 and that this goal was adopted by the November 2017 Ministerial Conference hosted by the Russian Federation which resulted in the Moscow Declaration to End TB; expects practical steps to be taken to achieve this at the September 2018 high-level meeting on the topic which is to be convened by the President of the UN General Assembly; further recognises that better TB control depends upon the development of more effective interventions to detect, cure and prevent TB, encapsulated in the third pillar of the End-TB strategy of Intensified Research and Innovation; supports UK research institutions focusing on TB who are seeking to co-ordinate a UK TB research network; highlights the leading work of St Andrews' Division of Infection and Global Health as a key stakeholder in this network; and further supports their endeavours to tackle the disease as we mark World TB Day on 24 March 2018.