The TB CAB strives to ensure that TB research is driven by the needs and priorities of TB affected communities and that the resulting innovations and interventions are accessible to everyone, everywhere. Here are the TB CAB’s advocacy priorities for 2024-2026:
- Informing research agendas and clinical trials protocols to ensure that TB prevention, diagnostics, and treatment research is rigorous, efficient, equitable, and driven by and inclusive of community needs.
- Advancing TB vaccines research by improving the transparency, accessibility, and inclusivity of TB vaccine science, and by building community literacy and connection with TB vaccines research.
- Improving TB CAB knowledge and capacity on diagnostics to support engagement with sponsors, donors, and stakeholders that shape markets to ensure appropriate community consideration and generate demand.
- Promoting pre-approval and post-trial access programs to enable early access to new TB drugs and regimens and new TB vaccines as soon as sufficient safety and efficacy data are available.
- Advocating for regulatory authorities to rapidly review new product applications and uphold rigorous evidentiary and quality standards for new TB drugs, regimens, vaccines, biosimilars or generics, and other products.
- Supporting evidence-based policymaking and accelerated access to innovations by working with the World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Program, WHO regional offices, and National TB Programs to improve adoption of new normative guidance.
- Ensuring affordable pricing and access to essential drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines by working further upstream to promote conditions on public funding and downstream to address intellectual property licensing strategies, shortages, stock outs and other supply constraints.
- Calling for research funding by supporting communities to foster country-level resource and research mobilization to build accountability around the new fair-share funding targets for TB research and development (R&D) published by Treatment Action Group (TAG).
- Challenging de-prioritization of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in “transition” from donor funding to ensure continued inclusion in research, regulatory, and access to innovation strategies and initiatives for new TB drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic technologies.