The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on countries to accelerate efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) and expand access to lifesaving services using innovative diagnostics, including point-of-care tests and tongue swabs.
In a statement on Tuesday, WHO highlighted that these portable, low-cost tests bring TB diagnosis closer to patients, delivering results in under an hour and enabling quicker treatment initiation.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the new tools are transformative, allowing fast and accurate TB diagnosis, saving lives, curbing transmission, reducing costs, and potentially enabling testing for other diseases like HIV, mpox, and HPV.
“WHO recommends using tongue swabs for patients unable to produce sputum, expanding testing to high-risk adults and adolescents, and employing sputum pooling to reduce costs and increase efficiency in resource-limited settings.
“Each day, more than 3,300 people die from TB, and more than 29,000 fall ill with this preventable and curable disease,” he said, warning that cuts in global health funding threaten progress.
He added that the uptake of rapid diagnostics has been limited due to high costs and reliance on centralised laboratories, urging the scale-up of near-point-of-care, low- or moderate-complexity tests for all populations.
On World Tuberculosis Day 2026, themed “Yes! We can end TB: Led by countries, powered by people,” WHO called for comprehensive action, including community-led care, resilient health systems, and multisectoral strategies to tackle TB’s social and economic drivers.
Tereza Kasaeva said investing in TB generates up to 43 dollars in returns per dollar spent and urged decisive leadership, strategic funding, and rapid implementation of WHO innovations.
She stressed that sustained research investment is essential, noting a five billion dollar annual funding gap for the development of new diagnostics, medicines, and vaccines needed to effectively combat tuberculosis worldwide.
“Initiatives such as the TB Vaccine Accelerator Council aim to fast-track the development and equitable access to new TB vaccines by aligning governments, researchers, funders, and industry around shared priorities and coordinated investment.”
WHO urged governments and partners to priorities TB as a central pillar of health security and universal health coverage, calling for urgent action to save lives and strengthen the global TB response.
