Andrew George, Nick Herbert and Julie Morgan
The United Kingdom's first ever All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Global Tuberculosis was established in 2006 by three Members of Parliament: Andrew George (Liberal Democrat - St Ives and Isles of Scilly), Nick Herbert (Conservative - Arundel and South Downs) and Julie Morgan (Labour - Cardiff North), who jointly chair the Group.
The APPG formed as a result of a Parliamentary delegation trip to Kenya in September 2005 that ACTION partner RESULTS UK organized. While in Kenya, the APPG founding members went on site visits to a number of TB and TB-HIV programs and were given opportunities to discuss issues in great detail directly with patients, health workers, NGOs, the Kenyan Ministry of Health and representatives from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in Kenya. Following the delegation, the MPs wrote a letter urging the World Bank to fund existing TB control programs, incorporate TB and TB-HIV into the Multi-country HIV/AIDS Programs (MAPs), encourage African governments to expand and strengthen TB services, and implore the IMF to reassess its restrictive policies.
Julie Morgan went back to Rwanda and Kenya with RESULTS UK in 2006 and said of the trip, "The whole experience has really brought home what people in Kenya lack and that TB is not a priority. Everyone we discussed TB with has always had it at the bottom of the list and we have to bring it into the discussion. I think there is a huge job to do in terms of raising TB as an issue at home and with DFID generally. The visit so far has just been so worthwhile in terms of making parliamentarians aware of what's happening here."
The three Members of Parliament acted on these observations by launching the APPG on Global TB. The overall purpose of the APPG is to raise the profile of the global tuberculosis epidemic (which includes the growing incidence of TB in the UK) and to help accelerate efforts to meet international TB control targets. The APPG has a growing membership of Parliamentarians from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and ACTION partner RESULTS UK is the secretariat.
In 2007, the APPG released an Agenda for Action calling on the UK government not only to fulfil the commitments it has already made for global TB control but also to increase its overall investment in stopping TB. In 2008, the APPG has also held meetings with the Executive Director of Global Fund and other key figures to discuss ways of putting TB on the local and global agenda to overcome barriers to diagnosis and treatment.
MPs with Kenyan and RESULTS UK staff at the National AIDS/STD Control Programme.
MPs with staff at Moi Teaching & Referral Hospital.
