After months of diagnostic delay, a migrant worker could access TB services only when a community health worker met him

A migrant worker who was sick for over three months, actively sought medical help and advice, but his health kept deteriorating. Despite having constant cough, fever, and increasing weakness since months, neither he nor his treating doctor(s) thought of TB. And this did not happen in an area with low TB rates but in India’s national capital Delhi – a state with highest TB rates nationwide – and a country which is home to the largest TB burden in the world.

[podcast] Dr Bornali Datta shares high impact journey of Medanta vans reaching the unreached with TB services

Listen to this podcast featuring Dr Bornali Datta, Director, Respiratory Medicine at Medanta, and Project Lead of Mission TB Free Haryana. She shares insights of the incredible and high-impact journey of Medanta vans since 2015 onwards of how they are reaching the unreached with WHO recommended and quality assured TB diagnostics and services in Haryana, Delhi, and other parts of India. She is in conversation with Shobha Shukla, CNS founder Managing Editor and Chairperson of Global Antimicrobial Resistance Media Alliance.

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] Age with rights

[video] Medanta van on wheels are reaching the unreached with WHO recommended TB screening and diagnostic tools

The chasm between TB and HIV continues

“The two worst global health problems have combined forces well. But the institutions addressing them have miserably failed to put their act together,” wrote Dr Tim France, a noted global health thought leader, in an op-ed article titled “The chasm between TB and HIV” which was widely published in several newspapers of high TB burden countries in Asia Pacific and Africa in 2006.

[video] Find all TB → treat all TB → prevent all TB → End TB | Science-based photo story

[podcast] TB science simplified

TB Science Simplified podcast: Prof Urvashi B Singh explains TB diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Prof Urvashi is in-charge of Tuberculosis Division, and Professor, Department of Microbiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (AIIMS Delhi) is speaking in End TB Dialogues. She is also the Co-Chair of Diagnostic Committee, National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP, Government of India, and member of Diagnostic Committee, India TB Research Consortium, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and ICMR Task Force on Genital Tuberculosis. Prof Singh is in conversation with CNS Founder, Managing Editor and Executive Director Shobha Shukla.

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.

[podcast] Find all TB → treat all TB → prevent all TB → End TB | Shobha Shukla speaks

Listen to this exclusive podcast on the theme: "Find all TB → treat all TB → prevent all TB → End TB" produced by CNS head Shobha Shukla. This is an exclusive and powerful science- and evidence-backed narrative on why critical building blocks of #EndTB agenda are: #FindAllTB, #TreatAllTB and #PreventAllTB - grounded in people-centred and human-rights-based and gender transformative approaches.

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] TB Science Simplified: AIIMS Delhi's Prof Urvashi Singh explains TB diagnosis, treatment, prevention

It is not natural disasters but manmade barriers that block access to TB care

It is not natural disasters (like hurricanes or storms) which block access to TB care services most times, but manmade barriers that fuel injustices, inequities, greed, and risk factors that put people at risk of TB disease and death.

May you be the woman you want to be in a man's world

[हिन्दी] "A judge's son is a lawyer, and this lawyer's father is an inspector. Then who is the judge?" 

When this question was asked in a training workshop, many participants floundered on the answer. Deep-rooted gender biases and harmful gender stereotypes and narratives, often affect the gendered way we think. Perhaps that is why it is not so obvious to many that a woman can also be a judge as well as a mother!

We cannot leave the older people behind if we are to end TB

One in four persons globally who had developed active TB disease in 2022 was over 55 years of age as per the latest WHO Global TB Report 2023 - around 2.7 million people. But over a million of these older people were missed by TB services (or not notified to the national TB programmes if they ever received any kind of care or not).

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.

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:

1. 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
2. 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.

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.

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.

Journey of a TB survivor from pain to strength

⭐ Watch the interview on Facebook, YouTube or Instagram

Immortal words of Leonard Cohen, “there is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in,” best sum up the transformative journey from pain to strength of Binika Shrestha, a native of Hetauda in Nepal. Binika shared the travails of the long path she trod- from being diagnosed with TB, going through the TB treatment, fighting the side effects of medicines as well as the haunting and daunting stigma, to eventually getting cured, and then, a few years later becoming a district TB officer herself.

Are we prepared to combat online gender-based violence?

[watch the recording on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram (part 1, 2), or listen to podcast] Gender-based violence is among the most prevalent human rights violations globally. Urgency is palpable as governments worldwide have less than 7 years to end all forms of gender-based violence and deliver on the promise of gender equality for all by 2030. But instead of declining, gender-based violence has become even more sinister and complex because technology-based and technology-facilitated online gender-based violence is also on an alarming rise.

Quantum of solace in efforts to find all TB but glaring gaps remain

[हिन्दी] As the year 2023 comes to an end, it is indeed a quantum of solace moment in terms of finding all TB worldwide. Globally we could find a record number of new TB cases in a single year - historically. Over 7.5 million new TB cases were diagnosed in 2022 worldwide – highest ever in the age-old fight against TB (as per the latest Global TB Report of the UN health agency, the World Health Organization (WHO) which was released in November 2023).