Mitigating the financial effects of TB requires more than expansion of services

In The Lancet Global Health, Stéphane Verguet and colleagues report a modelling study of the effects of expanding TB services on averting catastrophic costs to TB-affected households in India and South Africa. They assessed three different scenarios of TB control: improved treatment of drug-sensitiveTB; improved treatment of multidrug-resistant TB; and expanded access to services (all individuals who seek care being screened for TB symptoms; South Africa only). The outcomes were compared with a base case, which assumed that coverage and treatment success rates at start of the study would be maintained at a constant from 2016 to 2035. They used extended cost-effectiveness analysis as a complement to their model to estimate the differential effects of the scenarios across socioeconomic quintiles.