Community Connect, an open-access space, is a valuable addition and important highlight of The Union World Conference of Lung Health 2024. This year’s program will comprise of sessions in 4 tracks.

On 14 May 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) will convene a civil society Town Hall in close collaboration with the WHO Civil Society Task Force on TB. The Town Hall will focus on the urgent actions needed to translate the Political Declaration of the 2023 UN High-Level Meeting on TB into action, through the civil society lens and community empowerment.

On 15 May 2024, Treatment Action Group (TAG) will host a webinar on TB diagnostics pipeline: New tools & opportunities to improve access to testing.

Global TB infections are rising, with some patients suffering lung damage long after they are cured. There are also new strains of drug-resistant TB.

In October 2023, the Stop TB Partnership Working Group on New Vaccines (WGNV), IAVI, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine co-hosted a workshop with tuberculosis (TB) high-burden country experts to build understanding of what epidemiological, impact, feasibility, and acceptability data would be needed to plan for TB vaccine introduction at the national level. With several TB vaccine candidates already in late-stage development, critical work is underway to understand what is needed for successful introduction of a new vaccine, especially within high-burden countries.

Only about 12-16% of children and young adolescents with MDR-TB or rifampicin-resistant TB were diagnosed and treated in 2022. Diagnosing them is hard, and the treatment course is lengthy and side-effect-prone.

RESIST-TB released its May 2024 newsletter with the latest updates and research publications on drug-resistant TB.

-- CHMP recommends Conditional Marketing Authorisation be converted into standard Marketing Authorisation

-- Recommendation supported by results from the Phase 3 STREAM Stage 2 study, which show bedaquiline-containing regimens offer significant improvement compared to other available therapies

Experts are working on novel immune-enhancing therapies called host-directed therapies to use the body's own immune system to target tuberculosis, with hopes that they could tackle even the drug-resistant forms of the disease. In a presentation at this year's ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) in Barcelona (27–30 April), Associate Professor Susanna Brighenti, Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM), ANA Futura at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, presents work being done in this area by a collaboration of scientists.

The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IJTLD) is the official publication of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union).