Health care gaps in the global burden of drug-resistant tuberculosis

Discussion
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The drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) cascade—from estimated or incident cases to numbers successfully treated or disease-free survival—has long been characterised by sharp declines at each step in the cascade. The losses along the cascade vary across different settings, and the reasons why some countries have a higher burden of DR-TB are complex and multifactorial; broadly, weak health systems, inadequate financing and poverty all impact differential access to DR-TB care. Within a human rights framework that mandates the right to health and the right to benefit from scientific progress, the aim of this review is to focus on describing inequities in access to DR-TB care at critical points in the cascade.

PDF attached.

Cox IJTLD 2019.pdf (776.2 KB)

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@madhukar.pai, nicely written article (and thanks for the citation!). Public health investing is a game where you always have less money than you wish that you had. That being the case, we should be prioritizing investment efforts where the least money does the most good.

I’d love to see some restraint on the obsessions with shiny new tools and instead on fixing some of the specific gaps identified in this article. Those gaps have been studied, evidence of interventions generated, and are generally known with a known Return on Investment (ROI). Funders and Implementing Partners should be responsible with their taxpayer money or donations and channel these investment towards high-reward gaps.