Ending diseases together: the case for multi-communicable disease elimination in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

For decades, communicable disease control in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) has been largely organised disease by disease. Malaria, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and HIV programmes have each developed their own surveillance systems, supply chains, partnerships, and reporting lines at the national level and to WHO. This structure has delivered real, hard-won gains, and diseasespecific programmes remain the backbone of the region's technical capacity. But it has also produced parallel systems that perform, in many settings, functions that could be shared.