World TB Day Event - Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Representative Kay Granger (Texas – 12th district) accepts her TB Champion award at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

View the photos from the event.

On  March 24, 2014, in recognition of World TB Day, TB advocates, survivors and global health groups from across the globe banded together to raise awareness of the burden of tuberculosis and call for continued investments in fighting this deadly disease.

On the evening of Tuesday, March 25, 2014, USAID honored some very special individuals and organizations for championing the fight against tuberculosis at an awards ceremony held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The distinguished honorees at USAID’s Honoring Champions in the Global Fight Against Tuberculosis event included Senator Sherrod Brown, Congresswoman Kay Granger, Congressman Eliot Engel, His Excellency Mr. Heng Hem, Ambassador to the U.S. from the Royal Kingdom of Cambodia, and Rear Admiral Kenneth (Ken) Castro, Director of the Division of TB Elimination for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Senator Brown, and Representatives Granger and Engel were honored for their persistent leadership in global health, for raising the political awareness of TB, and for saving lives from curable diseases.

The Ministry of Health of Cambodia was recognized for extraordinary progress in TB diagnosis, treatment and care in the country and for reaching its Millennium Development Goal target of cutting in half TB mortality and prevalence prior to 2015.

Rear Admiral Castro was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award to honor 30 years of exemplary service to the CDC and for being a stalwart TB champion for nearly two decades.
A TB Champions award was also presented to The Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS and TB Epidemic (CREATE) - an international research consortium that is measuring the impact of bold strategies for controlling the AIDS and TB co-epidemic. Dr. Richard Chaisson accepted the award on behalf of CREATE.

The diversely attended event also included TB supporters, advocates, and TB survivors, as well as BAFTA award-winning producer Jezza Neumann, whose documentary TB Silent Killer aired on PBS the same evening.

Speaking at the event, USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health Dr. Ariel Pabloz-Méndez commended the TB community for making remarkable progress in the past 20 years, and called for a redoubling of efforts to build on the progress achieved so far and reach the goal of zero deaths from TB.  “Effective TB diagnosis and treatment has saved 22 million lives over the past two decades” he said, adding that “if we are able to scale this up in the private sector, and reach those not seeking care to be treated earlier, many more lives can be saved each year, and at the same time, prevent the creation of more drug resistant TB.”