About the UN Meeting

In December 2016, a resolution was passed calling for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to hold the first-ever high-level meeting on the fight against tuberculosis.  The UNGA meeting took place on 26th September 2018 and resulted in the General Assembly committing to a declaration: “United to End Tuberculosis: An Urgent Global Response to a Global Epidemic”.

Members of our group participated in September’s UN meeting and have produced a collective statement urging action in key areas.   Several members were also present at the preceding UN Civil Society Hearing in June.  You can read a report on the June meeting on our website.  A selection of videos of the hearing is available on the HEART website, and you can watch Prof Bertie Squire’s summary of the June meeting on YouTube.

In the lead-up to the September meeting, UKAPTB championed the importance of this landmark gathering and rallied the UK TB community to engage with the national government and ensure it was seen as a political priority.  Over 130 leading academics and professionals signed our letter to the Prime Minister in August. 

Ultimately, the UK government was among the most prominently-represented of the G20 countries at the meeting, with Penny Mordaunt (Secretary of State for International Development) and Jeremy Hunt (Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) both in attendance, along with Nick Herbert (co-chair of the APPG on Global TB and the Global TB Caucus).

See our About Tuberculosis page for more information about why TB is such a critical Global issue, and for links to useful factsheets.

Read more about the UNGA meeting on the World Health Organization’s website.