Tuberculosis

[Nation] Turkana County is on high alert over fears of a surge in tuberculosis infections, which officials say could hit 2,500 cases in a year. (AllAfrica)

[Nyasa Times] The National TB Programme (NTP) has resumed its psychosocial support to the drug resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) patients after a six-month break due to administrative challenges. (AllAfrica)

[The Herald] Herald Reporter (AllAfrica)

[spotlight] The treatment of drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (DR-TB) has been transformed over the last decade with treatment becoming more effective, safer, and treatment duration in many cases dropping to under a year. Even so, treatment can still come with serious side effects and for some, it can still last over a year and a half and involve taking many different pills every day. (AllAfrica)

[The Conversation Africa] TB is one of the oldest infectious diseases in recorded history. Most of the people who are ill with TB live in low- and middle-income countries where this disease is one of the leading causes of death. This is particularly distressing given the fact that TB is preventable, treatable and curable. But there's currently only one vaccine approved against TB. And it is 100 years old. The first dose of the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine was administered on July 18 1921. The Conversation Africa's I (AllAfrica)

[WHO] The World Health Organization is publishing a position statement on Innovative Clinical Trial Designs for Development of New TB Treatments. This document aims to support TB regimen development by highlighting key clinical trial characteristics to help advance novel therapies. It summarises key innovations in TB clinical trial designs, ranging from pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) modelling and new advances in biomarker development to the value of novel clinical trial design methodologies and post-li (AllAfrica)

[WHO] Dear colleagues, partners and friends, (AllAfrica)

[UCT] A team of scientists, including those from the University of Cape Town (UCT), have developed a new diagnostic methodology enabling a non-invasive, fast and highly accurate way of detecting tuberculosis (TB). (AllAfrica)

[Premium Times] Global health experts seek improvement of the 100-year-old BCG vaccine. (AllAfrica)

[spotlight] Thandeka* is walking with her backpack through the streets of Khayelitsha. She is an uNompilo - a community health worker. She is describing a typical experience of one of the people she is helping with Tuberculosis (TB). (AllAfrica)

[WHO] The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued an update to its consolidated guidelines on the detection of TB and drug-resistant TB. The guidelines are accompanied by an operational handbook to facilitate rapid implementation and roll out of rapid molecular tests by national TB programmes, ministries of health and technical partners. (AllAfrica)

[WHO] A global database set up by WHO's Global Tuberculosis Programme in collaboration with the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) has been collating data on Active TB Drug Safety Monitoring and Management (aDSM) since 2016, to monitor the safety of patients who receive MDR-TB treatment with new medicines (e.g. bedaquiline, delamanid), repurposed medicines (e.g. linezolid, clofazimine) or new regimens, which don't have a well-established safety profile. The aDSM framework has (AllAfrica)

[Daily News] The Benjamin Mkapa Foundation (BMF) is on a mission to establish a special fund to be contributed by development partners, health stakeholders and well-wishers, an initiative that will enable the foundation to continue improving provision of health services in the country. (AllAfrica)

[Premium Times] Nigeria remains one of the 30 countries globally with the highest burden of the disease, while it also ranks first in Africa in the number of undetected cases. (AllAfrica)

[Namibian] WHILE the world is battling the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, 36-year-old Joseph Haikali is fighting a rare disease that causes his joints and knees to continuously keep swelling. (AllAfrica)

[WHO] The World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria signed a cooperation and financing agreement to implement 10 strategic initiatives to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics and strengthen systems for health. This new agreement, which will cover the 2021-2023 implementation period, aims to address some of the persistent challenges that impede progress against the three diseases and protect hard-won gains from new pandemics like COVID-19. (AllAfrica)

[spotlight] Ventilation plays an important role in preventing the transmission of airborne disease but currently, ventilation standards for buildings are focused on preventing odours in spaces, instead of preventing disease transmission. Both Tuberculosis (TB) and COVID-19 can infect an individual via airborne transmission. (AllAfrica)

[The Herald] Health Reporter (AllAfrica)

[Global Fund] Geneva -- Global health leaders Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have joined forces with the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) to contribute to, and support, the implementation of robust accounting practices in the public health sector and to improve overall financial management of donor funds by implementing countries. (AllAfrica)

[WHO] The World Health Organization (WHO) today released updated global lists of high burden countries for tuberculosis (TB), HIV-associated TB and multidrug/rifampicin-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB). The new lists are for 2021-2025 and replace those previously used between 2016 and 2020. (AllAfrica)

[This Day] Global has allocated the sum of $900 million to support national efforts to address the challenges of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV in Nigeria. (AllAfrica)

[WHO] On 16 June, WHO convened a high-level event to shine the spotlight on the importance of TB prevention which urgently needs to be ramped up to reduce suffering and save lives from TB - one of the world's top infectious killers. The event, titled "A global drive to scale up TB prevention" comes 18 months before the deadline established by Heads of State at the United Nations High Level Meeting on TB in 2018, to achieve ambitious targets towards ending TB. It is also 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic that (AllAfrica)

[SAnews.gov.za] A Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) report has revealed that Tuberculosis remained the main leading cause of death in South Africa between 2016 and 2018. (AllAfrica)

[spotlight] While COVID-19 will continue to make headlines for some time, 2021 will also be a critical year for healthcare reforms in South Africa and for various aspects of the country's HIV and TB response. These are Spotlight's top 12 healthcare questions for the year. (AllAfrica)

[Leadership] Abuja -- The Minister of state for health, Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora has revealed that the care and attention given to HIV, tuberculosis and other ailments have been neglected due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. (AllAfrica)

[Thomson Reuters Foundation] The pandemic has hit Africa's overburdened health services and left many unable to access treatment - raising fears of up to one million excess deaths from other illnesses (AllAfrica)

[WHO] Abuja -- "During a tuberculosis outreach in my community, one of the team members insisted I take a test as he said I already have symptoms. As I was about to undergo the test, the DSNOs suggested I also undergo a COVID-19 test because I was also displaying some of the symptoms," says 32 year old Janet Ishaya, reached through the TB intervention in Kaduna State. (AllAfrica)

[spotlight] Completing the six months of treatment for standard drug-susceptible tuberculosis (DS-TB) can be hard. Apart from side effects associated with the medicines, people may feel better after a month or two and be tempted to stop taking the treatment. Maintaining treatment adherence is even harder for drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) since the medicines have more serious side effects and treatment can last as long as two years. (AllAfrica)

[Daily Trust] The news last week regarding tuberculosis is not a cheering one for TB patients, the stakeholder in the health sector and the nation generally. (AllAfrica)

[spotlight] The most recent World Health Organization (WHO) World Tuberculosis Report estimates that in 2018, 301 000 people fell ill with TB in South Africa. The report also indicates that the real number may lie anywhere between 215 000 and 400 000 - an astonishingly wide margin. These wide margins illustrate one of the most concerning aspects of the TB epidemic in South Africa - we don't really know how many people get sick with the often deadly disease. (AllAfrica)

[Daily Trust] Experts in the health sector have said that tuberculosis is killing Nigerians more than COVID-19 is doing. (AllAfrica)