A Better Way to Track TB

By: dhahn () in BU Today

In March 2011, South Africa’s National Health Laboratory Service was considering replacing [...]the method it uses to diagnose TB from “smear microscopy”—looking for TB bacilli under a microscope, the way it has been done for nearly a century—with a new technology recommended by the World Health Organization. For advice on the costs of such a switch, the service turned to researchers from the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office (HE2RO), a collaboration between researchers from BU’s Center for Global Health & Development (CGHD) and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The technology, called GeneXpert MTB/RIF, had two advantages over existing methodology: it found more TB, and it found it much faster.

Tags: sph, School of Public Health, global health, south africa, tuberculosis, cghd, genexpert

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