CNS: February 2024

Treatment is prevention: Stop the spread of infection by finding all and treating all TB

"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

These golden words of Michelangelo perhaps sum up the fundamental gap in the fight to end TB worldwide.

In this podcast, Manitosh Ghildiyal, TB and HIV human rights activist, shares his personal lived experience with HIV as well as TB - and how he is advocating for people-centred responses to end TB and end AIDS. Why cannot all people-in-need get better tests and new shorter and more effective treatments for TB? he asks.

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Podtail, BluBrry, Himalaya, ListenNotes, American Podcasts, CastBox FM, Ivy FM, Player FM, iVoox, and other podcast streaming platforms.

[video] Detecting all TB cases and treating them is critical to stop the spread of TB

5000 vertical HIV transmissions in India in 2021

States need tailored interventions to eliminate vertical transmission

Written by: Shobha Shukla, Bobby Ramakant

Edited by: Dr Trupti Gilada (CNS Medical Editor HIV & TB science)

published in aidsmap on 19 February 2024

published in aidsmap on 19 February 2024

149 experts call to find all TB to stop TB

One hundred and forty nine delegates of 78th National Conference of Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases ( NATCON) have endorsed a global call to find all TB to stop TB, which has 1 key ask: Stop missing TB cases, by taking 2 actions:

Replace smear microscopy 100% with WHO recommended molecular tests as soon as possible, along with a paradigm shift from a lab-centric to a fundamentally people-centric model to find TB, leaving no one behind
Find the missing millions! Screen everyone (and not just those with TB symptoms) in high burden settings with WHO recommended screening tools, and confirm those with presumptive TB using molecular tests.

[video] Global North vs Global South: End health inequity to end TB and deliver on health for all

[podcast] Ending inequity is imperative to end TB and deliver on #HealthForAll

This podcast features Sumit Mitra, a thought leader on reaching the unreached with best of evidence-based diagnostics and health services, and President of Molbio Diagnostics (makers of Truenat). He is speaking at the World Social Forum (WSF 2024) in Kathmandu, Nepal, in a session entitled "Ending inequity is imperative if we are to end TB and deliver on health for all." This WSF 2024 session is being held in Ministry of Health and Population, Nepal.

[video] Go to the communities and #findAllTB

It is time to hold governments to account for ending tobacco

Currently the intergovernmental talks on the legally binding global tobacco treaty are taking place in Panama. This meeting, formally called the tenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), has delegates from 183 countries representing more than 90% of the world’s population, to review progress in the implementation of the global tobacco treaty, and take the next steps to help achieve the right of all people to lead healthy lives.

Would you not be surprised to learn that an industry whose products kill over 8 million people every year (even when used as the manufacturer intended), and cause an array of health and environment disasters of epidemic proportion, has not been held to account fully? Yes we are referring to the Big Tobacco. Well, perhaps a very long wait could be over as governments of over 180 countries are meeting in Panama for advancing progress on global tobacco treaty - and it is likely that such a decision to make Big Tobacco Pay - may come forth, finally.

Why are shorter, safer and more effective treatments for drug-resistant TB not reaching everyone in need?

Is it not a paradox that a preventable, diagnosable, treatable, and curable bacterial infection disease is still 1.30 million people every year. Yes we are talking of TB. Today we have all the solutions to #EndTB - point-of-care molecular tests to diagnose drug sensitive and drug-resistant TB upfront within an hour or so, and begin patient-friendly shorter treatment regimens ("same day test and treat") to get rid of this dreaded disease. And yet in 2022, an estimated 10.6 million people developed TB globally, out of which 410,000 cases were of drug-resistant TB. Moreover only less than half of those with drug-resistant TB (43%) were able to access treatment.