World TB Day 2022
Invest to End TB. Save Lives
Shining a light on TB - Blog for World TB Day
Dr Naomi Walker is a Senior Clinical Lecturer at LSTM researching TB immune responses, towards improving TB treatment outcomes
Can the world now learn lessons from this new global Covid-19 pandemic to apply to the long-standing global TB pandemic? We believe it can and should. Reminding those with power and influence that TB health workers, hospitals, labs and TB care platforms were instrumental in the fight against Covid-19 and that TB can and will affect them if nothing is done, may help combat indifference. Ensuring no one with TB is left behind, is essential.
On World TB Day 2022, let’s put TB in the spotlight and keep people with TB at the very centre of it all.
Invest to End TB – Save lives!
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses a threat to the control of drug-resistant TB in Europe and the world
LSTM's Tom Wingfield is co-author with Jessica Potter, a Consultant in Respiratory Medicine and TB specialist working in London.
Ukraine still has one of the highest burdens of TB in Europe. Also, it is of great concern that nearly a third of the people affected have drug-resistant TB, with high and increasing rates of MDR-TB and XDR-TB.
The invasion of Ukraine is an impending disaster for TB control across the entire region and potentially beyond. War anywhere lays the foundations for outbreaks and epidemics of infectious diseases from cholera in Yemen, to polio in Syria, and measles in Afghanistan. Indeed, both world wars caused a profound increase in TB deaths.
LSTM Connecting Citizens to Science podcast: Series 3: Ending TB: Putting people at the centre of opportunities for change
Working with the LIGHT research programme, in this series of podcasts we will be in conversation with global experts on the current challenges facing the local to global TB response. Behind Covid-19, tuberculosis is the second deadliest infectious disease across the world with more than 4100 TB-related deaths every day (WHO Global TB Report 2021). We will be talking about how evidence from and about communities and people can help ensure that decision-making is informed and that the global commitment to end TB by 2035 is achieved.
-
Challenges and opportunities in TB: leveraging lessons from COVID-19 – the view from the frontlines
-
Re-imagining TB treatment (or) the Challenge of TB treatment and the need for Change!
-
TB and diagnosis - Using state of the art technology to find and treat people living with TB
-
TB and gender: changing the dynamics
Ending TB locally, regionally, nationally, and globally: where are we up to on World TB Day 2022?
- 10 million people fall ill with TB each year....
- 4 million of whom never reach diagnosis or care....
- 1400 people die of TB each day....
- one in two TB-affected households globally incur catastrophic costs due to TB....
But, despite the above, funding to end TB through research, care, and advocacy, is dismal.
Indeed, although TB and Covid-19 are the two top infectious diseases killers worldwide, the funding for Covid-19 has eclipsed TB.
For investment in vaccine development alone: Covid-19 = $100 billion in 18 months. TB = $117 million.
We have to Invest to End TB and save lives.
At LIV-TB, across Liverpool, and more broadly, we've been working hard behind the scenes to get these messages out for World TB Day 2022. Find out more by using the Microsoft Teams meeting link to join the meeting.
Cochrane reviews on tests for tuberculosis disease and tuberculosis drug resistance
With its editorial base at LSTM, Cochrane Infectious Diseases joins the global community in recognizing World TB Day with a Special Collection of systematic reviews on tests for tuberculosis disease and tuberculosis drug resistance.
The WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme has led the development of guidelines for diagnostic tests that allow for screening for and rapid detection of tuberculosis and drug-resistant tuberculosis. These guidelines were developed using the GRADE approach for rating the certainty of a body of evidence and translating evidence into recommendations.
This Special Collection includes selected systematic reviews from Cochrane Infectious Diseases and other international teams that underpin two WHO consolidated guidelines on systematic screening for tuberculosis disease and on rapid diagnostics for tuberculosis detection.
Kathryn Lougheed writes, “Untangling ourselves from this foe is not a simple task. How do you kill something that’s spent millions of generations finding ways not to be killed? … Because if we can understand the makings of TB, then maybe we can find a way to unmake it”.We hope this Special Collection of systematic reviews will enable anyone who is interested to find high-quality information on tests for tuberculosis. Then, we will find the way to unmake it.
The Special Collection was curated by Mikashmi Kohli, Adrienne Shapiro, and Karen Steingart (Cochrane Infectious Diseases), and Nazir Ismail, Alexei Korobitsyn, and Cecily Miller (WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme).
Social and health factors associated with adverse treatment outcomes among people with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in Sierra Leone: a national, retrospective cohort study
In a new paper in Lancet Global Health, Rashidatu Kamara Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Sierra Leone and Tom Wingfield LSTM share results on new research on the social and health factors associated with adverse treatment outcomes among people with MDR-TB in Sierra Leone.
They also discuss the study in a new Lancet Global Health Podcast. You can listen here
