July 2014

This week, the ATS and its partners, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and RESULTS, met with staff in the Administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to urge increased funding for global and domestic tuberculosis control through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for fiscal year (FY) 2016. The OMB drafts the administration's annual federal agency and program budgets. On global TB, the ATS urged the administration not to propose the steep 19 percent funding cut to USAID's TB program in FY2016 that has been proposed by the administration for the past two years. Fortunately, Congress has not adopted the proposed cut. The ATS pointed out that USAID's TB program is highly effective, having contributed to the 41 percent and 40 percent reductions in TB mortality and morbidity globally since 1990, and it is already funded disproportionally lower than its health burden relative to other leading infectious diseases.

On TB in the U.S., the ATS urged increased funding for CDC's domestic TB program, funding for which was cut back to FY2005 year levels in 2014. The ATS pointed out that every state in the U.S continues to report TB annually, with some reporting drug resistant cases, and that as a result of funding cuts, some state and city TB programs are unable to operate TB infection programs at full capacity.