Press Release

Representatives Ami Bera, M.D. (D-CA) and María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), co-chairs of the House Tuberculosis Elimination Caucus, and Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee today led 104 colleagues in a bipartisan letter to the Biden Administration urging bold U.S. leadership at the upcoming United Nations High Level Meeting (HLM) on tuberculosis.

In the letter, the Members wrote:

“In a time of such incredible opportunity and need, the Administration’s bold 3-year commitment to the Global Fund last September must be matched with strengthened bilateral TB programs, and continued diplomatic efforts to draw more partners and resources to the table to fight this airborne killer. We urge the administration to bring new concrete commitments for ending tuberculosis to the HLM, and to commit to developing a whole of government strategy for advancing the global targets to be endorsed at the HLM.”

The full letter can be found here.

Tuberculosis (TB) is largely preventable, treatable, and curable, yet before the COVID-19 pandemic it was the world’s leading infectious disease killer, claiming more lives each year than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. Drug resistant TB is the leading cause of death from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally, including multidrug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB which are significantly more expensive to treat with higher rates of treatment failure. In 2021, an estimated 10.6 million people fell sick, and 1.6 million people needlessly lost their lives to this curable disease.

Rep. Bera recently introduced the End Tuberculosis Now Act of 2023, bipartisan legislation to strengthen U.S. efforts to eliminate tuberculosis worldwide.