The 3rd African TB Summit, a collaboration between the Pan African Parliament, NEPAD and the Africa TB Caucus, brought together 11 senior members of the Africa TB Caucus network and around 40 members of the Pan African Parliament (PAP). It took place in Praia, Cape Verde, on the 5th and 6th of August, within the meeting of the Pan-African Parliament’s committee on Labour, Social Affairs and Gender.
The agenda of the summit included various conferences about TB and related issues such as TB preventive treatments or cross-border TB. It also included testimonies of Caucus members’ experiences in high-burden countries like Namibia, Nigeria and Ghana, as well as a budget workshop led by the Global Fund.
The summit counted with the presence of numerous authorities of the Cape Verde Government and Parliament such as Right Hon. Jorge Santos, Speaker of the National Assembly of Cape Verde, who opened the summit, alongside with Hon. Lucia Mendes dos Passos, Chairperson of the PAP Committee on Gender, Family, Youth and People with disability. Dr Arlindo Nascimento do Rosário, Minister of Health and Social Security closed the summit and reaffirmed Cape Verde and Africa’s commitment to end TB by 2030 and to push for political action towards this goal.
The debates were lively and interesting and allowed a real exchange of knowledge and experience between MPs from different regions of Africa. By the end of the meeting all parliamentarians signed a statement of intent to ensure their commitment to work on ending the disease in their country. Among other things, they committed to develop a call to action plan to support the upcoming replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, and also committed to develop a closer pact between parliamentarians and civil society partners to drive a sustainable political response to the disease in each country.
The summit was a success and many MPs attending showed their will to launch national caucuses in their own countries. Parliamentarians committed to launch at least five more caucuses in Africa thanks to this gathering, including a Lusophone TB Caucus.