This roundtable, held at Centre for Global Health Policy, University of Sussex, threw light on various dimensions of TB, including the global disease burden and the national situation in the UK, access to treatment, drug resistance, and recent efforts by pharmaceutical companies and global health initiatives to develop new therapies. A summary of the roundtable event is available for download [PDF 344.26KB].
TB is second only to HIV as the leading infectious killer of adults worldwide. One-third of the world’s population carry Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB, – 1.4 million of whom die each year. TB disproportionately burdens the Global South, with over 90% of new cases and deaths occurring in low-income countries. Moreover, whilst TB primarily affects people during their most productive years TB presents serious financial ramifications to individuals and to entire economies. The rise of drug-resistant TB and its spread to more than 50 countries has emerged as a major global health challenge and, for some countries, is viewed as a potential national security threat. Yet, whilst efforts to develop TB therapeutics continue there has been little real progress towards global TB control.
The roundtable was chaired by Professor Melanie Newport (Professor in Infectious Diseases & Global Health, University of Sussex). This video shows her introduction to the event:
The following videos are of the presentations given by the guest speakers:
Professor Stewart Cole (Coordinator of the More Medicines for TB Consortium and chair of the Global Health Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne)
Dr Grania Brigden (TB adviser for MSF’s Access Campaign)
Professor Ibrahim Abubakar (Professor in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, UCL and head of the TB Section at the National Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control, Public Health England)
Dr Al Story (Find and Treat, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust)
All content taken from the Centre for Global Health Policy, University of Sussex.
Relevant resources: