Vizcarra will attend the United Nations High Level Meeting on Tuberculosis

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The Executive Branch moves in favor of the fight against tuberculosis. Sources from the Ministry of Health and the Stop TB Partnership organization confirmed to Wayka that President Martín Vizcarra will attend a meeting at the United Nations regarding the high-level of tuberculosis that will be held on September 26 in New York City, in the United States.

In a convention led by Julia Rios, director of the Department of Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis of the MINSA, announced that the current president will attend the high-level meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding tuberculosis. So confirmed also sources of the National Multisectoral Health Coordinator (CONAMUSA), an organization made up of representatives of the government, international cooperation, civil society and patients.

Previous to this, on June 5 arrived a letter to the presidential office where Vizcarra’s commitment to attend said meeting was requested. “We hope that together with other heads of state from other countries, they can join the commitment of accelerating progress towards the goal of ending TB by 2030, according to the goals established by WHO,” says the document. It was also signed by the NGO Socios en Salud (Partners in Health), the Association of Tuberculosis Patients, the Association of People Affected by Tuberculosis Promoting Ate Welfare and a long list of TB patients and pulmonologists.

As Wayka reported in ‘The lost match against the most lethal tuberculosis’, the presence of Peru in this meeting is urgent because more than 37 thousand Peruvians contract TB, of which only 31 thousand cases are detected. In addition, Peru is the second country on the continent with more cases of multidrug-resistant (MDR-TB) and extensively resistant (XDR-TB) patients, two types of TB more lethal and immune to TB treatments.

A StopTB document that Wayka had access to shows that 47 countries have already confirmed their attendance, including presidents, prime ministers and health ministers; like Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Japan, Fiji, Ghana, Iraq, Guatemala, Nigeria, Ireland, Panama, South Africa, Somalia, Samoa, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, among others.