The Clock is Ticking to End TB. What Does It Take?

A family nurse at a Family Medicine Center in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, gives a daily dose of TB drugs to a patient as part of directly observed treatment, a case management approach to ensure quality care and treatment adherence. Photo credit: Aibek Chakiev for JSI

Despite being preventable, treatable, and curable, TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, imposing economic burdens on affected individuals, families, and public health systems. Progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to “End the TB epidemic by 2030” is lagging behind, with some regions of the world, including the United States, experiencing a rise in TB-related deaths since 2015. Recent funding reductions to TB programs around the world are exacerbating the situation, with global health experts estimating a 28-32% increase in TB and multi-drug resistant TB incidence in the next year.

TB treatment can be up to 95% successful at curing patients when effectively administered. We have the tools – let’s work together to identify, treat, cure, and prevent TB transmission and death. We CAN end TB!

What Does It Take?

With our partners, JSI improves intersecting systems—monitoring, financing, and logistics—and integrates digital tools to support data-informed decision-making and person-centered care. We have seen transformations in national, state, and district TB programs, resulting in newly accredited laboratories, improved data for decision-making, and increased cure rates when we have designed tailored, intersectional approaches with our country partners. These kinds of programs can prevent and cure TB before the disease has a chance to spiral into a deadly and expensive crisis, undermine the industries that rely on affected workers, or jump across borders. Here are four key elements of JSI’s work that are helping end TB.

Understanding the Epidemic

TB and infectious disease programs can use patient or disease surveillance data to understand who is getting sick, how effective current TB services are at treatment and prevention, and who may be at risk for getting TB. This information then guides how programs continue or modify their TB plan to better serve clients affected by TB.

Equipping Public Health Providers

Once countries understand what the needs are, they can identify the equipment required to effectively treat people with TB and prevent the spread. Equipment needs span from basic medical equipment like microscopes and personal protective equipment to more advanced equipment like medications, GeneXpert testing machines, and computer-aided detection and x-ray machines. Better equipped facilities and health care providers are more likely to identify TB and drug-resistant strains requiring more specialized care.

Delivering Continuous and Person-Centered Care

Data and equipment supports health care providers to offer accessible and continuous care for their communities. This includes contact tracing and screening, testing, initiating treatment, keeping people on treatment, and offering TB preventative therapy and other prevention methods to those at risk of acquiring TB. With person-centered, simple, stigma-free, and high quality care, people can be cured of TB.

Innovating in Response to Multi-Drug Resistance

Although we have effective treatments to prevent and cure TB, many countries were experiencing an increase in multi-drug resistant TB cases prior to recent global TB funding reductions. As more clients experience treatment interruptions, the threat of multi-dug resistance epidemics grows. To get back on track to ending TB, we need implementation strategies that consistently keep people on treatment as well as new research on therapeutics that can respond to emerging strains.