14 March 2018: UN Member States are preparing to review progress on ending tuberculosis (TB) and preventing early deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Informal consultations are underway for a “comprehensive review” on NCDs in 2018, which would be the third high-level meeting of the UNGA on the issue. In addition, a high-level meeting on tuberculosis (TB) also is planned for 2018, and governments have reached agreement on the modalities for the meeting.

Sebastiano Cardi, Permanent Representative of Italy, and Elbio Rosselli, Permanent Representative of Uruguay, are co-facilitating negotiations on the NCDs review at UN Headquarters in New York, US. Meeting on 9 March 2018, delegations began discussing a zero draft resolution on modalities for the gathering. The second informal consultation was scheduled to convene on 14 March.

In consultations co-facilitated by Walton Webson, Permanent Representative of Antigua and Barbuda, and Koro Bessho, Permanent Representative of Japan, governments agreed on the modalities of a high-level meeting on combating TB. A draft resolution on the modalities was circulated on 26 February 2018 under silence procedure.

According to the text, the TB meeting will take place on the second day of the UNGA’s general debate for the 73rd session, which is 26 September 2018. It will be organized on the theme of ‘United to end tuberculosis: an urgent global response to a global epidemic.’ The meeting will open with high-level statements by Member States, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others engaged in the fight against TB. Two multi-stakeholder panels will take place on the topics of: access to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care; and scaling up national and international financing for service delivery, innovation and research into diagnostics, drugs, vaccines and other prevention strategies. The meeting is expected to approve a “concise and action-oriented” political declaration, which will be negotiated prior to the meeting and agreed by consensus. Member States also agreed that an interactive civil society hearing in preparation for the meeting will take place no later than July 2018.

The budget implications of organizing the high-level meeting on TB are being reviewed by the UN Secretary-General, the UNGA’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), and the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary).

The WHO previously convened the First Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Tuberculosis in the Sustainable Development Era in Moscow, Russia, from 16-17 November 2017.

SDG target 3.3 commits to ending TB epidemics. Target 3.4 commits to reducing early deaths from NCDs by one-third by the year 2030. [Letter of Co-Facilitators on First Informal Consultations on the Modalities Resolution for NCDs Review] [Zero Draft of NCDs Modalities Resolution] [Draft Resolution on ‘Scope, modalities, format and organization of the high-level meeting on the fight against tuberculosis’]