-- Nearly 1 – 1.15 lakh children in India get affected by TB every year. Thousands of cases go unmissed as the testing is not child friendly. Current sample collection methods are painful, time consuming and inconvenient.
-- First-of-its-kind sample collection device to be developed by 221B Biomedical Pvt. Ltd. with grant and support from India Health Fund, a Tata Trusts initiative.
-- The flavoured low-cost device will require children to simply chew and blow or cough for easy and safe sample collection of oral fluids.
-- The innovation will make testing simpler and will likely increase testing and treatment rates, lower mortality and infection transmission due to TB.

12 December 2022: Today is Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day, the annual rallying point for the growing movement towards health for all. UHC Day marks the anniversary of the United Nations’ historic and unanimous endorsement of universal health coverage in 2012.  It comes just two days after Human Rights Day that is commemorated on 10 December each year, in recognition of the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Tuberculosis (TB), one of the world’s top infectious killers, overwhelmingly affects marginalized people and communities, who are often also faced with poverty, stigma and discrimination, and social exclusion. TB-related catastrophic costs impact a significant proportion of people with TB, pushing many of them further into poverty. People-centred, quality and timely services for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care for TB are a basic human right.

Development of more effective TB drugs and vaccines is a pressing, unmet medical need.

The manual provides an overview of the recommended use of IGRAs as a class of in-vitro tests for the detection of TB infection and describes their performance, steps for use and implementation considerations.

Boston, MA, December 8, 2022 – Researchers have discovered a new form of altered drug susceptibility—dubbed antibiotic resilience—that enables Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) to survive antibiotic treatment. The study, led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, could help inform future therapeutics and reduce treatment failure in tuberculosis patients.

A document summarizes the results of the WHO-commissioned full value proposition for new TB vaccines.

A potential new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine developed at James Cook University is one of six now being tested in the first phase of a US $1.7 million head-to-head vaccine tournament, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Most TB testing today relies on sputum samples coughed up from the lungs. This makes intuitive sense since pulmonary (or lung) TB is the most common form of TB and sputum provides testable samples straight from the scene of infection.

A report highlights that despite reaching US$1 billion in spending in 2021, funding for TB R&D is a mere fraction of what’s needed to achieve UN sustainable development goal of ending TB as a pandemic by 2030.

The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) offers a wide range of comprehensive, free online courses delivered by leading experts. The training and education programs are designed to improve overall lung health, and better manage TB in low-resource settings.