Vientiane, Laos, 7 August 2024 — The Airborne Infection Defense Platform (AIDP) was officially launched today to strengthen ASEAN countries’ tuberculosis (TB) response, health care systems, and pandemic preparedness to address the growing issue of airborne respiratory infections.
The initiative was inaugurated at a side event of the 16th ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting (AHMM), where government leaders from ASEAN member states gathered and opening remarks were given by H.E Dr. Bounfeng Phoummalaysith, Minister of Health of the Lao PDR. The leaders came together to improve understanding of TB and pandemic preparedness across ASEAN, enhance stakeholder cooperation, and strengthen nations’ capacity to address airborne respiratory infections.
AIDP is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Stop TB Partnership and Stop TB Partnership Indonesia (STPI), a non-governmental organization that works towards the elimination of TB. The platform is endorsed by the ASEAN member states.
More than 2.4 million people across ASEAN are estimated to be affected by TB, based on the Global TB Report 2023. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic devastated national TB prevention and treatment programs as personnel and resources were redirected from TB to COVID-19, leading to an estimated increase of almost half a million additional deaths of TB from 2020 to 2022.
In his opening remarks, His Excellency Dr. Bounfeng Phoummalaysith, Minister of Health of the Lao PDR said, “The Covid-19 pandemic impacted nearly every aspect of human life. We must learn from our experiences and be better prepared for any similar situations in the future. Our regional health system is evolving and we need to create a stronger and more resilient system. The TB program has several management principles that can be easily adapted for any airborne disease, such as rapid screening tools, contact tracing, digital and community systems, and early warning systems. We need to invest in platform technologies and create infrastructure that can be deployed for future airborne pandemics.”
Preceded by conducting a landscape assessment, the AIDP will focus on strengthening each ASEAN country’s pandemic and TB responses, including at the community and primary care levels. This will be done through enhanced cooperation between ASEAN members, as well as global NGOs and international governmental organizations to enhance existing healthcare infrastructure to improve detection, treatment, and prevention. It will also include leveraging platform technologies that have developed since the COVID-19 pandemic including portable digital X-rays that enable testing to be done locally, rapid molecular testing technologies, and digital real-time surveillance tools. These various TB preparedness measures will be beneficial in facing a future pandemic, which is highly likely to be an airborne infectious disease.
Prof Tjandra Yoga Aditama MD, Stop TB Partnership Indonesia Senior Advisor and Airborne Infection Defense Platform (AIDP) Project Lead said, “The high death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic showed that the world was not prepared to combat the pandemic. In addition to the loss of human life, Covid-19 also severely impacted TB prevention access and treatment programs. The condition of tuberculosis (TB) in ASEAN is quite concerning, with many countries in the region still facing significant challenges in controlling and managing TB. This demonstrates the importance of working together with ASEAN to strengthen the TB response system to not only create surge capacity for TB cases but also enhance pandemic preparedness.”
Dr Suvanand Sahu, Deputy Executive Director, of Stop TB Partnership, said, “The first phase in the Airborne Infection Defense Platform project will improve understanding by carrying out a landscape assessment across 10 ASEAN countries. This will outline the current capacities of each country to respond to TB and future airborne pandemics and recommend actions to achieve better pandemic preparedness. Following this, our second phase will support community-based and primary healthcare activities and initiatives to strengthen the preparedness capacity of TB responses across ASEAN to better address airborne respiratory infections or pandemics. We would like to thank USAID for their continued commitment to tackling TB around the world, particularly in the ASEAN region, whose efforts have culminated in AIDP. We would also like to thank the Govt. of Lao PDR for their leadership in convening the first meeting on AIDP.”
TB has a high mortality rate of almost 15%, compared to Covid-19, which stands at 3.5%. Research by Hogan et al. (2020) showed that TB prevention and treatment was significantly affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, where TB case detection decreased, household transmission of TB increased, BCG vaccination rates dropped, and access to TB drugs and testing declined.
Photo by: Supplied
