Geneva, Switzerland, 11 December 2020 -  Only one in seven people in need of being tested for tuberculosis (TB) receive a rapid diagnostic test despite the fact that the first rapid molecular test for TB has now been in existence for a decade. As the GeneXpert test marks its 10th anniversary this week, the Stop TB Partnership calls for an emergency expansion of the use of rapid molecular diagnostics to ensure the speedy and efficient diagnosis of TB for all those that need it.

A communities report on progress towards the UN Political Declaration on the Fight Against TB and a Call to Action to close the gaps in TB targets

Pretoria, 10 December 2020 — TB Alliance welcomes the Wits Health Consortium and the South African National Department of Health (DoH)’s announcement of an initiative to provide a new, shorter treatment regimen for people affected with highly drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB). Funded by the United States Agency for International Development, a new clinical access program (CAP) will enroll 400 people in South Africa for treatment with a three-drug, six-month, all-oral regimen of bedaquiline, pretomanid and linezolid (known as the BPaL regimen) that has been shown to demonstrate a favorable outcome in 90% of patients.¹ This treatment was developed by TB Alliance and studied in its pivotal Nix-TB trial, which was also conducted in South Africa.

Оn the occasion of Human Rights Day, 10 December, Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Program delivered a special message highlighting the importance of promoting a human rights based approach to end TB.

Noncommunicable diseases now make up 7 of the world’s top 10 causes of death, according to WHO’s 2019 Global Health Estimates, published today. This is an increase from 4 of the 10 leading causes in 2000. The new data cover the period from 2000 to 2019 inclusive.

Structural data revealing how an anti-tuberculosis drug works could aid efforts to improve therapeutic options for the disease. The findings also uncover aspects of how the drug’s target, the ATP synthase enzyme, operates.

The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute signed an agreement to advance the development of investigational sutezolid-containing TB drug regimens, especially for low- and middle-income countries, where most people with TB live. The drug candidate sutezolid, in combination with other drugs, could potentially be used as an all-oral, shortened regimen for all forms of TB, including multidrug-resistant TB.

The report — Tuberculosis Research Funding Trends, 2005–2019 — presents new data on 2019 funding for TB research and development and analyzes trends in investment since 2005.

7 December 2020 | GENEVA: In a Rapid Communication issued today, the World Health Organization (WHO) is announcing a number of updates to its forthcoming guidance on the systematic screening of tuberculosis (TB) disease. This will help national TB programmes, public and private healthcare providers, funders and other stakeholders to prepare for the changes that will be introduced when the new guidelines are released in early 2021.

One of South Africa’s foremost tuberculosis (TB) researchers, Dr Francesca Conradie, a principal investigator at the Clinical HIV Research Unit (CHRU), has called for a renewed focus on TB testing in South Africa to help find new TB cases that ‘went missing’ during the Covid-19 lockdown. TB testing, the mainstay of SA’s TB programme, took a severe knock during lockdown which has left many South Africans with undiagnosed TB. “We need to find them,” she says.