The Global Tuberculosis Report 2013, published today by the World Health Organization (WHO), confirms that the world is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target of reversing TB incidence, along with the target of a 50 per cent reduction in the mortality rate by 2015 (compared to 1990).

The report also underlines the need for a “quantum leap” in TB care and control which can only be achieved if two major challenges are addressed, WHO stated in a news release.

First, there are around three million people – equal to one in three people falling ill with TB – who are currently being ‘missed’ by health systems. WHO estimates that 75 per cent of the three million are in 12 countries.

Also, the response to test and treat all those affected by multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) is inadequate. Not only are the links in the MDR-TB chain weak, the links are simply not there yet, according to the report. WHO estimates that 450,000 people fell ill with MDR-TB in 2012 alone. China, India and Russia have the highest burden of MDR-TB followed by 24 other countries.

At the heart of both challenges, said WHO, is insufficient resources for TB.“Quality TB care for millions worldwide has driven down TB deaths,” said Mario Raviglione, WHO Director of the Global TB Programme. “But far too many people are still missing out on such care and are suffering as a result. They are not diagnosed, or not treated, or information on the quality of care they receive is unknown.”

While the number of people detected worldwide with rapid diagnostic tests increased by more than 40 per cent to 94,000 in 2012, three out of four MDR-TB cases still remain without a diagnosis.

Even more worrying, WHO pointed out, is that around 16,000 MDR-TB cases reported to the agency in 2012 were not put on treatment, with long waiting lists increasingly becoming a problem. Also, many countries are not achieving high cure rates due to a lack of service capacity and human resource shortages.

“The unmet demand for a full-scale and quality response to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is a real public health crisis,” Dr. Raviglione stated. “It is unacceptable that increased access to diagnosis is not being matched by increased access to MDR-TB care.

“We have patients diagnosed but not enough drug supplies or trained people to treat them. The alert on antimicrobial resistance has been sounded; now is the time to act to halt drug-resistant TB.”

Another challenge, according to the report, relates to the TB and HIV ‘co-epidemic’. While there has been significant progress in the last decade in scaling-up antiretroviral treatment for TB patients living with HIV, less than 60 per cent were receiving antiretroviral drugs in 2012.

The report recommends five priority actions that could make a rapid difference between now and 2015. These include reaching the three million TB cases missed in national notification systems by expanding access to quality testing and care services across all relevant public, private or community based providers, including hospitals and non-governmental organizations which serve large proportions of populations at risk.

Other priorities include addressing with urgency the MDR-TB crisis; intensifying and building on TB-HIV successes to get as close as possible to full antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage for people co-infected with TB and HIV; increasing domestic and international financing to close the resource gaps – now estimated at about $2 billion per year – for an effective response to TB in low- and middle-income countries; and accelerating rapid uptake of new tools.

“The WHO Global TB report highlights the very big gains the global community has made in the fight against tuberculosis,” said Osamu Kunii, Head of the Strategy, Investment and Impact Division of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

“We are now at a crucial moment where we cannot afford to let these gains go into reverse. We need the commitment of the international community to address the significant funding gap to fight this disease.”

“In line with the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge, and in close collaboration with our development partners, we agree that nothing less than the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition is what we should be striving for,” said José Graziano da Silva, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Opening the global consultation on hunger, food security and nutrition in the post-2015 development agenda, held in Rome on Monday, Mr. Graziano da Silva urged the international community to commit to the complete eradication of hunger in setting its development priorities beyond 2015.

Halving the proportion of hungry people in the world by 2015 was among the targets within the eight MDGs. Some 50 countries are on track to achieve this target, the Director-General noted.

Amir Abdulla, Deputy Executive-Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), urged countries to continue to work together to make hunger “the world’s number one solvable problem.”

Meanwhile, Carlos Serè, Chief Development Strategist of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), emphasized that “investing in the sustainable development of rural areas and in inclusive rural growth,” with a focus on smallholder agriculture, is critical for global food security and to the whole post-2015 agenda.

The one-day consultation called for including a focus on nutrition in the post-2015 development agenda, as well as for dealing with the different dimensions of under-nutrition and the fast-growing problems of obesity and related non-communicable diseases, according to a news release issued by FAO.

It also stressed, among other things, that food security and nutrition represent the cornerstone for progress on other development fronts such as employment, education, the environment and health and in achieving a quality future for humankind, the agency reported.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge, first proposed at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil last June, aims for a future where every individual has adequate nutrition. Its five objectives are to make sure that everyone in the world has access to enough nutritious food all year long; to end childhood stunting; to build sustainable food systems; to double the productivity and income of smallholder farmers, especially women; and to prevent food from being lost or wasted.

By 2050 one in every three births will be African, compared to only one in ten in 1950, according to just one of the findings in UNICEF’s Generation 2025 and beyond: The critical importance of understanding demographic trends for children of the 21st century.

Almost one in three children under the age of 18 will also be African, the study says, though under-five deaths will continue to increasingly occur in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in pockets of poverty and marginalization of heavily populated, low-income countries, and in least developed nations.

Overall, demographic shifts involving children will present policy makers and planners with “major challenges” in the decades following the 2015 deadline for achieving the anti-poverty goals known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which the international community set in 2000 to dramatically reduce poverty, UNICEF said in a press release.

Launched by the General Assembly in 1954, the Universal Children’s Day is aimed at having countries focus on the welfare of the world’s children as they promote the ideals of the UN Charter. The day also harks to when the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 – both on the date of 20 November.

The study found that the United States is the only high-income country projected to have an increasing proportion of children by 2025.

“What is important is whether the world, as it prepares for the post-2015 agenda, takes account of this fundamental and unprecedented shift,” said a co-author of the study, David Anthony of UNICEF. “We must do everything possible so these children get an equal chance to survive, develop and reach their full potential.”

Co-author Danzhen You of UNICEF highlighted the need to “safeguard” children in a way that their rights are “respected and upheld.” UNICEF said this was especially necessary as the aging global population increases pressure to shift resources away from children.

“Children do not vote,” You said. “Their voices are often not heard when governments make decisions about funding.”

The UNICEF study drew its findings from UN Population Division projections.

“Though China and India will continue to have a major share of the world’s population, in absolute terms, Nigeria will see the highest increase in its under-18 population of any country, adding 31 million children, a rise of 41 per cent, between 2010 and 2025,” the study says. “At the same time, Nigeria will account for one in every eight deaths among under-18s.”

According to projections, the 49 UN-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs) will account for around 455 million of the two billion global births between 2010 and 2025. Five populous middle income countries – China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria – will account for about 859 million births between 2010 and 2025.

“For least developed countries, serious consideration must be given to how to meet the needs of children, especially in health and education,” UNICEF said.

The study notes that population growth is such that children will make up 90 per cent of the next billion people – expected by 2025 after the world’s population reached seven billion in October, 2011.

The paper’s recommendations include targeting investments to areas where children will be born; focusing on neglected groups, especially in high-population, middle-income countries; reaching the poorest and most isolated households; and urgently tackling the issue of old age dependency.

“On this day, we call for the creation of supportive teaching environments, adequate teacher training and safeguards for the rights of teachers,” the agency chiefs said, calling on governments to provide required training and fair salaries reflecting the importance of the profession while teachers, in turn, must be accountable to their students and communities.

“We must break the vicious cycle of declining professional conditions for teachers in order to improve the quality of learning for all,” they added. “The world expects a lot from teachers – they, in turn, are right to expect as much from us.”

The statement was issued by UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova; the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director, Anthony Lake; the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Administrator, Helen Clark; the UN International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Director-General, Guy Ryder; and Fred van Leeuwen, the General Secretary of Education International, which represents teachers’ organizations across the globe.

“Attracting committed and diverse teachers requires environments that value professional autonomy and equality,” they said. “Teachers need to be supported in fulfilling their responsibilities to students, and their voices must be listened to by school leaders, education systems and public authorities.”

According to UNESCO, teacher shortages remain a major obstacle for countries to achieve the goal of universal primary education, with a quality education offering hope and the promise of a better standard of living, while also noting that there can be no quality education without competent and motivated teachers.

World Teachers’ Day, held annually since 1994, commemorates the anniversary of the signing in 1966 of the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers, and celebrates the essential role of teachers in providing quality education at all levels. The Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers has, essentially, served as a charter of rights for teachers worldwide.

The slogan for this year’s observance is ‘Take a stand for teachers!’ which, according to UNESCO, relates to the need to provide adequate training, ongoing professional development, and protection for teachers’ rights.

The 63-year-old UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which assists some five million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East, marked the Day by launching two programmes focussed on school-based teacher development and quality improvement that underscores the Agency’s broader human development and humanitarian agenda.

Education is UNRWA’s largest programme, accounting for more than half of the Agency’s regular budget, with one of the largest school systems in the Middle East, providing half a million Palestine refugee children with free-of-charge basic education every day.

“Across the Arab World, countries are striving to improve the quality of their education system through reform,” UNRWA’s director of education Caroline Pontefract said. “Many lessons have been learned about what is important, what to focus on, and the way in which to change and improve on what we have. UNRWA’s education reform reflects these lessons with the focus it places on teachers and school leaders, who are key actors in achieving quality education.”