Last year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The agenda includes 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) focused on ending poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality and improving global health -- among many other objectives.
Poor health caused by communicable diseases is disproportionately concentrated among impoverished communities and marginalized populations. There were 5.6 million new cases of tuberculosis and 548,000 tuberculosis-related deaths in the Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions in 2014.
