Innovations for Tackling Tuberculosis in the Time of COVID-19: Proceedings of a Workshop

Despite being preventable and curable since the middle of the twentieth century, tuberculosis (TB) has long persisted as the world’s deadliest infectious disease, with the communities most devastated by TB among the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. Only about half of people with TB receive successful treatment each year. As the global threat of antimicrobial resistance continues to escalate, so do cases of drug-resistant TB, or TB that is resistant to various antibiotics that constitute standard treatment regimens.

In response, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Microbial Threats held a two-part virtual workshop on July 22 and September 14-16, 2021 titled Innovations for Tackling Tuberculosis in the Time of COVID-19. The aims of the workshop were to evaluate the current status of TB elimination, assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global fight against TB, and examine technical and strategic innovations that could be leveraged to meet the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis targets in 2022 and The World Health Organization’s END TB Strategy targets by 2030. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.