The World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Program is the Secretariat of the WHO Civil Society Task Force on TB. The aim of the Task Force is to intensify the voice of civil society in ending TB at all levels.

Join the virtual - worldwide - TB town hall on 24 March!

20 March 2020 | GENEVA: As the world comes together to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to ensure that essential health services and operations are continued to protect the lives of people with TB and other diseases or health conditions. Health services, including national programmes to combat TB, need to be actively engaged in ensuring an effective and rapid response to COVID-19 while ensuring that TB services are maintained.

Governments of over 163 countries in 2015 promised to end TB by 2030; however, as the current rate of TB declines to 1.5 per cent, reports indicate that a remarkable increase of over 10 per cent of funding by 2025 globally would be required if the target is to be met by 2030. This is as the World Health Organization (WHO) recently ranked Nigeria as the country with highest cases of TB in Africa. Kehinde Osasona examines Nigeria’s precarious situation. Read his report here.

Aidspan: Global Fund Observer

Stanford scientists led the first comprehensive effort since the 1940s to measure how likely children are to develop tuberculosis when a family member has the disease.

Finding out which medicines work and which ones do not work can be a tricky business – especially if you are under severe time pressure. The ideal is to compare different options in large randomised controlled trials (RCTs), preferably trials where neither the study participants or healthcare workers know who is getting which treatment.

As the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the world, I and others working to fight TB have growing anxiety about what this pandemic will do to a much older infectious killer - tuberculosis (TB). We know from the Ebola experience that epidemics can disrupt even basic services such as routine immunization. No doubt, COVID-19 will adversely affect all routine health services everywhere. But TB services is might be one of the biggest casualties. Why?

Treatment Action Group (TAG) released an overview of TB data reported at the 2020 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) virtually held on 8-11 March 2020. A summary of major findings, TAG’s take on them, and high-level summaries of select findings are available here.

MUMBAI—Debshree Lokhande recalls trying everything to get rid of her cough, including syrups, lozenges, tablets, and Ayurvedic remedies. She had just moved to a new city and started her first job, fresh out of university. But within days, she said she was vomiting up “bowlfuls” of blood, her weight was falling sharply, and she was experiencing night sweats. A chest X-ray soon revealed that she had contracted tuberculosis. In normal circumstances, TB is a treatable disease—you just need the right doctor to administer the right combination of drugs. Back then, in 2011, Lokhande would have neither.