A Better Way to Track TB

By dhahn ()

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.
More info