Air travel is now widely accessible, with a resulting increase in the numbers
of international air travellers and a consequently greater risk of communicable diseases being spread by infectious travellers. The transmission of airborne infections between people in confined spaces such as aircraft cabins i...
Intersecting epidemics Tuberculosis (TB) remains a considerable global public health concern, mainly affecting poor and vulnerable populations. Every year, more than 9 million people fall ill with this infectious disease, and close to 2 million die from it. Diabetes, a chronic metabolic disease that is i...
Research over the past decade has resulted in the development of two commercial interferongamma release assays (IGRAs), based on the principle that the T-cells of individuals who have acquired TB infection respond to re-stimulation with Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific antigens by secreting interferon...
Earlier and improved tuberculosis (TB) case detection - including smear-negative disease, often associated with HIV co-infection - as well as expanded capacity to diagnose multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are global priorities for TB control. Conventional laboratory methods are slow and cumberso...
The World Health Organization (WHO) first published guidance for national
tuberculosis control programmes on managing tuberculosis in children (hereafter
called “the Guidance”) in 2006. The Guidance follows the principles of a public
health approach aimed at optimizing outcomes, including the quality...
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) increasingly occur in resource-constrained settings. In the context of a national response to MDR- and XDR-TB, health workers in TB clinics (in district hospitals and some accredited health centres) will need t...
