More innovation urged in fight to end tuberculosis

Health experts have called for more innovation in diagnosing and treating tuberculosis to bolster progress toward the goal of ending the infectious disease by 2035.

Data released by the World Health Organization shows that TB killed 1.3 million people globally in 2022, second only to deaths from COVID-19 and almost twice the number of HIV/AIDS mortalities. More than 10 million new TB cases are reported annually.

The WHO is committed to ending the disease by 2035, defined as cutting related deaths by 95 percent and reducing the incidence of the disease by 90 percent compared with 2015 figures.

"China holds a pivotal role in ending TB," said Martin Taylor, WHO representative in China. "It's time to turn commitments into tangible actions. With the right investments and actions in advancing TB care and research and reducing catastrophic costs, China can accelerate progress toward ending TB."

China has the third-highest number of TB cases worldwide and accounted for about 7 percent of new cases reported in 2022.

While acknowledging efforts made in China to curb the disease, Taylor said that more financial investments, tighter collaboration and stronger innovations are needed to boost progress.

"We need innovations in terms of developing new diagnostic tools, new treatment. We need innovation in service delivery models to make sure that we can get the treatment and diagnostics tools to people in need," he said.

"We also need innovation in how we finance addressing TB to make sure that the finance is used more efficiently, and that we can reduce those financial barriers (of patients)," he said at a symposium jointly held by the WHO and the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute earlier this month, ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Sunday.

Professor Peng Liyuan, wife of President Xi Jinping and the WHO's goodwill ambassador for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, called for coordinated efforts to end TB during a recent visit to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province.

She visited a health education facility and a community healthcare center in the city, and communicated with volunteers, primary medical staff, recovered TB patients and children waiting for vaccinations to gain an understanding of local efforts devoted to TB prevention, diagnosis and rehabilitation.

She called on everyone to promote knowledge of TB prevention and control among residents and young people in the community, and said that she hopes everyone can make contributions to ending the prevalence of the disease.

Official data shows that the amount of central financing allocated to reining in TB in China grew from 40 million yuan ($5.5 million) in 2001 to 1.27 billion yuan last year.

In recent years, the annual rate of decrease in TB incidence in China has been double the global average, and the treatment success rate has been above 90 percent. China's TB death rate has dropped to the level of developed countries.

Zhao Yanlin, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Center for Tuberculosis Control and Prevention, said that innovation is key to tackling drug-resistant TB and boosting access to treatment.

Official data shows that the treatment success rate for extensively drug-resistant TB cases and cases resistant to a common drug known as rifampin is lower than the global average.

More efforts are needed to rein in extrapulmonary TB, which accounts for around 18 percent of all TB cases in China, as well as to halt animal-human transmission and introduce new tools for proactive detection and preventive treatment, said Zhao.

"Research shows that 60 to 90 percent of new infections with the TB bacteria will develop the disease within one to two years after exposure.

“So delivering early interventions to people with primary infections will not only reduce incidence rates, but also help with follow-up treatment and management of TB patients,” he said.

A number of innovative treatment regimens and therapies are in the pipeline.

Zhang Wenhong, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, said that his team has conducted several studies on short-course treatment regimens for TB, under which the two-year treatment cycle for multidrug-resistant TB can be shortened to six to nine months, and the treatment cycle for general TB can be shortened to four months.

“We aim to accelerate progress toward ending TB with a modernized, integrated model, as well as a localized regimen that is more accessible and better suited to the drug metabolism of the Chinese population, which will improve patient compliance,” he said.