February/March 2016 – TAG and other U.S.-based NGOs and civil society groups sent several appeals to legislators to prioritize tuberculosis (TB) in plans for fiscal year 2017 in line with the White House’s recently released National Action Plan for Combating Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis. Letters to three key House and Senate subcommittees—the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, the Defense Subcommittee, and the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs—called for:

• $243 million in TB funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (House and Senate letters);
• $400 million in funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s global TB program (House and Senate letters);
• the inclusion of TB under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority’s new emerging infectious diseases program and its work to implement the National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (House and Senate letters); and
• maintaining TB on the list of approved diseases for the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program, which allows for the Department of Defense to invest in TB research programs (Senate letter).