Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, despite being largely curable and preventable. In 2019 an estimated 2.9 million of the 10 million people who fell ill with TB were not diagnosed or reported to the World Health Organization. The Political Declaration adopted by...
The political declaration at the first United Nations (UN) high-level meeting on tuberculosis (TB) held
on 26 September 2018 included commitments by Member States to four new global targets.3
One of
these targets is to diagnose and treat 40 million people with TB in the 5-year period 2018–2022. The
ap...
About one fourth of the world’s population is estimated to be infected with the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium, and about 5–10% of those infected develop active TB disease in their lifetime. The risk for active TB disease after infection depends on several factors, the most important being the person’...
Infection prevention and control consists of evidence-based measures intended to prevent exposure and reduce the risk of transmission of infectious agents.
The revised guidelines contain recommendations for specific administrative, environmental controls and respiratory protection, following the assessme...
The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) strategy for tuberculosis (TB) prevention, care and control for 2015–2035 (known as the End TB Strategy) prioritizes the early diagnosis of TB. This prioritization includes cases of smear-negative disease, which are often associated with coinfection with HIV ...
Isoniazid (H) is one of the most important first-line medicines for the treatment of active
tuberculosis (TB) and latent TB infection (LTBI), with high bactericidal activity and a good safety profile. The emergence of TB strains resistant to isoniazid threaten to reduce the effectiveness of TB treatment....
The present guideline update aims to use the best available evidence on the treatment of drug-susceptible TB, as well as on interventions to ensure adequate patient care and support, in order to inform policy decisions made in these technical areas by national TB control programme managers, national poli...
In November 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a meeting of a Guideline Development Group (GDG) for the update of policy recommendations on the treatment of drug-resistant TB. The GDG was composed of a multidisciplinary group of tuberculosis (TB) and drug-resistant TB experts external to ...
Early detection of tuberculosis (TB) is essential to improve health outcomes for people with TB, and to reduce TB transmission more effectively. Systematic screening in high risk groups is a complement to efforts to improve the patient-initiated pathway to TB diagnosis (that is, diagnosing TB among peopl...
Tests based on the detection of mycobacterial lipoarabinomannan (LAM) antigen in urine have
emerged as potential point-of-care tests for tuberculosis (TB). LAM antigen is a lipopolysaccharide
present in mycobacterial cell walls, which is released from metabolically active or degenerating
bacterial cells ...
