Tuberculosis (TB) is a major yet preventable global health problem, with an estimated 10 million new cases worldwide in 2018, resulting in more than 1.5 million deaths, making it the leading infectious disease cause of death worldwide. An estimated one fourth of the world’s population is infected with the TB bacterium, of whom 5–10% advance to active TB disease in their lifetime.
Prevention of TB is a crucial component of the World Health Organization (WHO) End TB Strategy that calls for 90% coverage of TB preventive treatment (TPT) among persons living with HIV (PLHIV) and household contacts of infectious TB cases by 2035. The UN high-level meeting on TB, in September 2018, further emphasized the need to strengthen implementation of TPT and called for 30 million people, including 4 million children under 5 years of age to receive TPT by 2022.
However, uptake and scale-up of TPT have been slow, mainly due to the limitations of both diagnostic assays and available regimens (long duration, cost, toxicity, adherence issues, and operational aspects), indicating the need for new short, safe, efficacious and easy-to-take regimens for the treatment of TB infection and prevention of TB disease. The WHO has developed draft Target Product Profiles (TPPs) for TPT to align developers’ performance and operational targets for new TPT regimens with the needs of end-users.
The draft TPPs are now available online for comment.
WHO invites comments or feedback from all stakeholders by 27 April 2020 via this link:
Based on the comments received on this draft, WHO will prepare the final non-draft TPP (version 1.0), which will be posted on WHO’s website and uploaded into the (WHO) Product Profile Directory by October 2020.
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