The 6th Global Forum on TB Vaccines was held virtually on 22-25 February 2022. Professor Mark Hatherill, director of the South African TB Vaccine Initiative, addressed the Forum in a session on New Horizons for TB vaccines, warning that the TB vaccine pipeline is depleted with little progress of candidate vaccines through the pipeline in the last few years, creating a serious problem for the next decade of vaccine development.

It is a hundred years since the BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin) vaccine, the only registered vaccine proven to offer some protection against tuberculosis , was first used in people. A relative shortage of public funding and little interest from pharmaceutical companies to develop new unprofitable TB vaccines has frustrated scientific research in this area for most of the last century.

15 southern African countries have recently pledged to improve treatment and care for current and former miners with tuberculosis and their families. Adele Baleta reports from Cape Town.