Ending TB Starts with Communities: Why Unitaid’s Investments Matter Now

Today, the world marks World Tuberculosis Day. But for millions of people, TB is not just a date on the calendar. It is a daily reality shaped by stigma, inequality, delayed diagnosis, and barriers to treatment.

As the Communities Delegation on the Unitaid Board, we want to use this moment to say something clearly: ending TB will not be possible without communities. Medical innovation matters. New tools matter. But without the leadership, trust, and lived experience of affected communities, even the best innovations will not reach the people who need them most.

Unitaid plays an important role in changing the global TB response. By investing in better tools and smarter approaches, it helps make TB diagnosis, treatment, and prevention more accessible, especially in countries carrying a high burden of disease. This includes support for shorter and safer treatment regimens for drug-resistant TB, improved access to modern diagnostics, and more patient-centred models of care.

This work is especially important in the fight against drug-resistant TB, which remains one of the biggest threats in the global response. New regimens are easier to tolerate, quicker to complete, and more effective for many patients. That matters because long, difficult treatment journeys often push people out of care. When treatment is shorter, safer, and easier to complete, the chances of recovery improve.

But innovation alone is not enough. Communities are often the first to see where the system is failing. They know where stigma keeps people away from clinics. They know where transport costs, fear, discrimination, or weak services prevent people from getting tested or staying on treatment. And they know what kind of support people need in real life, not just on paper.

That is why Unitaid’s investments in community-led and community-based approaches are so important. These investments help communities raise awareness, create demand for services, support people through treatment, document barriers, and push for changes in policy and funding. They also help ensure that TB responses are built around people’s real needs, not just around systems and targets.

Projects such as RESPECT and COMBAT DR-TB show what this can look like in practice. Through these efforts, communities and civil society organizations are supported to monitor the quality of TB services, identify barriers to access, advocate for better budgets and policies, and help people start and complete treatment. This is not a side activity. It is central to a more effective and more just TB response.

As a delegation representing communities living with and affected by HIV, TB, malaria, and other diseases, we work to bring these realities into Unitaid’s decision-making spaces. We push for investments that reflect lived experience. We remind decision-makers that affected communities are not passive beneficiaries. They are leaders, advocates, service partners, and agents of change.

This matters now more than ever. Tuberculosis remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world. Yet far too many people, especially those with drug-resistant TB, still do not get the care they need. That is not only a delivery gap. It is a justice gap.

On World Tuberculosis Day, we are not only talking about the disease. We are also speaking about the people who are fighting it every day: people affected by TB, grassroots activists, peer supporters, and civil society organizations that continue to hold systems accountable and push for change.

Unitaid shows that investing in communities is not optional. It is essential. Because without communities, there is no trust. Without trust, there is no access. And without access, there is no end to TB.