Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr Harsh Vardhan sought cooperation from the global community in the development of a Tuberculosis (TB) vaccine during a virtual high-level event on 'Global Drive to Scale-up TB Prevention' organised by WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme on Wednesday.
As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the purpose of the special high-level event was to discuss key actions needed at the global and country-level to scale up TB prevention strategies and drive progress towards achieving the 2022 UN High-Level Meeting target on TB preventive treatment.
Addressing the ministerial roundtable on country commitments to enhance TB prevention, Dr Harsh Vardhan said, "Scaling up TB preventive treatment is of utmost importance to break the chain of transmission and prevent the breakdown of those with TB infection into full-blown active TB disease. India is embarking on a new TB preventive treatment to combat and end TB by 2025."
Affirming India's commitments, the Union Health Minister said that India is aggressively implementing its fully-funded National Strategic Plan to End TB.
"Phenomenal work has been done in the last few years by treating 50 million people. India also stands committed to rapidly achieve national scale-up of TB preventive treatment (TPT) and activities to achieve the UN High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) targets of 40 million persons started on TB treatment and 30 million on TPT globally in the remaining 18 months," he said.