Urgent: U.S. Funding Cuts Deliver Devastating Blow to TB Programs

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States' 2025 budget reduction will have a disastrous effect on TB programs.

The global health body claims that because 18 of the nations with the highest burden of TB were dependent on 89% of the anticipated U.S. assistance for TB care, the funding cuts put them at danger.

The Country WHO revealed in a statement yesterday that the U.S. government has contributed roughly $250 million per year in bilateral funds for the country-level TB response.

The financing, according to the organization, represents almost 25% of all worldwide donor funding for tuberculosis.

It stated that because the United States has been the biggest bilateral contributor, the reduction will disproportionately impact low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that depend significantly on foreign aid.

According to the UN agency, the financial disruptions are most severe in the African region, followed by South-East Asia and the Western Pacific.

According to the WHO, services for tuberculosis prevention, diagnosis, and treatment have prevented over 79 million deaths over the previous 20 years, including almost 3.65 million fatalities last year alone.

"This progress has been driven by critical foreign aid, especially in LMICs, particularly from USAID," the statement states. But now, sudden financial cuts pose a serious threat to reverse these hard-won victories, endangering millions, particularly the most vulnerable.

"Based on information provided to WHO by national TB programs and to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Creditor Reporting System by the U.S. government."

According to Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, WHO Director of the Global Programme on TB and Lung Health, any operational, political, or financial disruption to TB services could have catastrophic and frequently lethal effects on millions of people globally.

According to Kasaeva, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated this, since insufficient social protection measures combined with service outages resulted in almost 700,000 unnecessary TB deaths between 2020 and 2023.

Kasaeva bemoaned the fact that USAID, the third-largest donor of TB research worldwide, has stopped all of its funded studies, seriously impeding advancements in TB innovation and research.

"Hard-won progress in the fight against tuberculosis is at risk if immediate action is not taken," she added. To safeguard the most vulnerable and keep the momentum toward TB eradication going, our collective reaction needs to be quick, well-thought-out, and properly resourced.

As directed by heads of state, WHO was instrumental in helping nations reach the 2027 and 2030 "End TB" targets, according to Kasaeva.

"The global fight against TB is in danger as financial withdrawals are already destroying vital services, according to early reports to WHO from the 30 countries with the highest TB burden. "This includes health and community workforce crises, where national TB programs are crippled by the suspension of technical assistance roles and the layoff of thousands of health workers in high-burden countries," Kasaeva continued.

She said that staff suspensions, financial constraints, and data errors were causing drug supply chains to collapse, endangering access to TB preventive and treatment programs.

Additionally, Kasaeva said that laboratory services are significantly disrupted, with diagnostic efforts being halted by shortages of necessary consumables, delays in procurement, and sample transportation.

Routine reporting and drug resistance monitoring are being undermined by the collapse of data and surveillance systems, she said. Active case discovery, screening, and contact tracing are examples of community involvement initiatives that are failing, which lowers early TB detection and raises the risk of transmission. "Millions of lives will be at risk, decades of progress will be undone, and TB prevention and treatment efforts will be severely hampered if these systemic failures are not addressed immediately," she warned.