Tuberculosis is one of the top ten causes of death. Every day, close to 4,000 people die from TB and nearly 30,000 people fall ill with this disease around the world.
Drug-resistant forms of TB are a major contributor to deaths from antimicrobial resistance globally. They represent a public health crisis with only one in three accessing treatment of the half million people who fell ill with drug-resistant TB in 2019.
Although tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment are free in most high TB-burden countries, TB patients face costs due to charges for health services, costs for transport, accommodation, nutrition and suffer lost income due to inability to work. These costs are higher for patients with multidrug resistant TB than for other TB patients.
This seminar will give an overview of the ways in which LSTM’s collaborative work has contributed to changes in WHO guidelines for the management of MDR-TB.
LSTM's Professor Bertie Squire, Laura Rosu and Ewan Tomeny will present highlights of the research, including Operational Modelling of new diagnostics and diagnostic pathways in the Philippines, the health economic evaluation of the multi-centre STREAM Trial, and home-based delivery of injectable medicines in Malawi.
This will be followed by a panel discussion on how the research is leading to reductions in time spent by people with TB on health facility attendances for diagnosis, treatment and follow up. These time savings are all contributing to reductions in patient costs and improvements in livelihoods and wellbeing.
The panel participants are:
- Prof Sarah Meredith, Professor of Clinical Trials at UCL
- Dr Gopalan Narendran, National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, Indian Council of Medical Research Chennai
- Dr Charles Yu, De La Salle Health Sciences Institute, Philippines
- Dr Corinne Merle, Special Programme for Research & Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), World Health Organisation, Geneva
- Dr Gillian Turner – Senior Health Adviser, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Pakistan
#TheClockIsTicking World TB Day 2021
The seminar will be live-streamed on Microsoft Teams via: LINK
A recording will be made available on the LSTM website the following day