Global progress at risk without faster diagnosis.

TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers. Each day, over 3300 people die from TB and more than 29 000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 83 million lives since 2000, however cuts in global health funding are threatening to reverse these gains. Uptake of rapid diagnostic tools has been a challenge in many countries due, in part, to high costs and reliance on sample transport to support testing at centralized laboratories.

Scaling up proven solutions, including point-of-care urine tests for people living with HIV, and near-point-of-care, low- or moderate-complexity tests for people with and without HIV, can collectively be used to close diagnostic gaps across all levels of the health system. Such efforts can help advance toward global targets for universal access to TB and drug resistance testing, reduce delays in treatment initiation and curb transmission.