Extract
Tuberculosis (TB) remains an important global health concern, even though it is largely curable with treatment that is affordable and widely accessible for diagnosed and notified TB patients. If not administered correctly, TB treatment regimens may fail to deliver a relapse-free cure, favouring continued transmission and the emergence of drug resistance. Monitoring the effectiveness of TB treatment is thus critically important in both clinical practice and surveillance, to maximise the quality of individual patient care and the effectiveness of public health action. Standardised TB treatment outcome definitions have been a feature of World Health Organization (WHO) policies and national TB surveillance systems for many years. This has allowed the monitoring of TB treatment outcomes over time at national and global levels.
Abstract
In 2021, WHO revised its tuberculosis treatment outcome definitions, making them uniformly applicable for different lengths of treatment for both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant disease https://bit.ly/3jFFgOu
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge and thank the two co-chairs of this meeting, Charles Daley and Cathy Hewison, as well as the numerous experts who attended the meeting and who contributed to the discussions. The meeting participants were: Carole Mitnick, Christoph Lange, Giovanni Battista Migliori, Mario Raviglione, Jonathon Campbell, Hoang Thanh Thuy, Maria Rodriguez, Welile Sikhondze, Norbert Ndjeka, Anastasia Samoilova, Yuhong Liu, Kuldeep Sachdeva, Daniele Maria Pelissari, Andrei Mosneaga, Sreenivas Nair, Morten Ruhwald, Fraser Wares, Grania Brigden, Draurio Barreira, Mohammed Yassin, Marlena Kaczmarek, Mukadi Ya Diul, Dumitru Chesov, Chen Yuan Chiang, James Seddon, Tony Garcia-Prats, Daniela Cirillo, Harald Hoffman, Sarabjit Chadha, Dissou Affolabi, Thandar Hmun, Renzong Li, Sabira Tahseen, Amir Khan, Choub Sok Chamreun, Nino Lomtadze, Mon Basilio, Dan Everitt and Xia Hui. In addition, we thank the WHO staff who attended this meeting: Tauhid Islam, Mukta Sharma, Vineet Bhatia, Askar Yedilbayev, Rafael Lopez Olarte, Kenza Bennani, Michel Gasana, Jean Louis Abena, Kyung Oh, Ernesto Jaramillo, Anna Dean, Marek Lalli, Marie-Christine Bartens, Charalampos Sismannidis and Olga Tosas-Auguet.
Footnotes
All authors are staff members of the World Health Organization (WHO). They alone are responsible for the views expressed in this publication and they do not necessarily represent the decisions or policies of WHO. The designations used and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of WHO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, nor concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
Conflict of interest: N.N. Linh has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: K. Viney has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: M. Gegia has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: D. Falzon has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: P. Glaziou has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: K. Floyd has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: H. Timimi has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: N. Ismail has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: M. Zignol has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: T. Kasaeva has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: F. Mirzayev has nothing to disclose.
- Received March 18, 2021.
- Accepted June 30, 2021.
- Copyright ©The authors 2021. For reproduction rights and permissions contact permissions{at}ersnet.org