March 24^th marked the commemoration of World TB Day 2019. On this day in 1882, Dr Robert Koch announced that he had identified the bacterium that causes the disease, tuberculosis (TB), a landmark event towards its diagnosis and treatment. More than 130 years later, TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, but in recent years, the number of deaths attributed to TB have fallen. While this represents significant progress, incidence remains high, and drug-resistant TB is a particular problem. In 2016, nearly half a million new cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) were reported worldwide - of these it is estimated that only one in four people had access to MDR-TB treatment, and of those only 55% were treated successfully. It has been suggested that this is due to inadequate medical care – either the wrong first-line treatment was used, or too many uninfected people are being exposed to MDR-TB (or both). The World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued new guidance on the treatment of MDR-TB, including a shift to fully oral drug regimens – the full consolidated guidelines can be found here. For this year’s World TB Day, the WHO are seeking to maintain the good progress that has been made in treating TB, and ensure that political commitments made at the 2018 UN High Level Meeting on TB are fully translated into action.

Meanwhile in London, the Francis Crick Institute hosted a symposium jointly organised by UCL and LSHTM to highlight current research efforts across multiple aspects of TB infection, immunology, and AMR, with addresses by Prof Baron Peter Piot and Prof Dame Sally Davies. This fantastic event was well-attended and provided fascinating insights into the multi-disciplinary work underway to help reduce the burden of this disease.