Press Briefing Via Conference Call on Breakthrough UN Forum on Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS

What:

On June 9, world leaders and members of the global health community will meet for the first time at the United Nations for a Global Leaders Forum on both TB and HIV/AIDS. The Forum is meant to draw attention to the ever-more dangerous relationship between the two diseases, particularly in the developing world as drug-resistant TB spreads across Africa. Leaders will share evidence from several countries that we can scale up to ensure universal access to high quality TB/HIV care and call on the rest of the world to catch up.

Who:

Dr. Mario Raviglione, Director, Stop TB Department, WHO

Dr. Kevin DeCock, Director, WHO Department of HIV/AIDS

Zackie Achmat, Founder, Treatment Action Campaign

Lucy Chesire, TB/HIV patient activist from Kenya

Moderated by Sir David Frost

When:

Monday, June 9, 12:00 noon ET by teleconference.

How:

To sign up or for further information, please contact Robyn Shepherd at (202) 783-7100 x120 (cell: (267) 230-7651) or by e-mail at [email protected]. On the day of the call, participants should dial (877) 719-9789 (U.S. and Canada) and ask for the “TB-HIV Press Conference.”

Why:

Long regarded in developed countries as a disease of the past, tuberculosis is currently devastating communities in the world’s most impoverished countries. TB and HIV/AIDS are, today, combining into a single massive threat. On the eve of the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, former President of Portugal and current UN Envoy to Stop TB Jorge Sampaio will call leaders of the world together to discuss the need to combat the combined TB-HIV pandemic.

AIDS activists and health experts are calling for a joint solution on TB and HIV so that people are not “living with AIDS but dying of TB” – a disease with a cure for half a century. New information from the WHO in countries like Rwanda and Kenya shows that scale up toward universal testing and treatment is possible in only a few years. Civil society groups are now calling for universal access to high quality TB-HIV care – which they say is possible by 2015 and could cut deaths from TB by 80 percent.

This conference will include a discussion about what the U.S. (in the context of PEPFAR reauthorization currently being held up in the U.S. Senate) and Canadian governments could be doing on TB/HIV.