Saturday 24 March is World TB Day, a day 'celebrated' around the world to highlight the importance of TB and it's effects on people across the globe - and the advocacy and research being performed to try to fight TB.
Far from being an extinct Victorian disease, TB still kills 1.7 million people around the world every year, more than any other infectious disease including HIV and malaria. This often comes as a suprise to people not working in the field. Emerging TB strains that are increasingly resistant to antibiotics are also a growing concern. Improved funding levels to allow increased research to develop better diagnostics, treatments - and, of course, vaccines - is crucial for us to combat this global killer.
With our remit to accelerate vaccine research and development for TB, as well as leishmaniasis, leprosy and melioidosis, VALIDATE is joining with our members and contacts around the world to highlight World TB Day 2018. Our Directors, Professor Helen McShane and Associate Professor Helen Fletcher, are both speaking at the UCL/LSHTM/UCSF World TB Day super-Symposium today (23rd); you can join this great Symposium online via livestream here.
Helen McShane will also be talking on BBC Radio Oxford at 7.08am on World TB Day itself (24th), about TB and the importance of research, so do listen in. [postscript: if you missed this, you can hear it here - 1:02:30 for the headline; 1:09:05 for the interview]
Finally, a VALIDATE article will be published to highlight VALIDATE's aims and plans to join our colleagues around the world in making sure TB becomes a disease of the past. F1000Research is pulling together a TB collection for World TB Day so there you can find lots of interesting papers about TB research across the world, many written by VALIDATE members. The global aim is to eradicate TB by 2030; let's all work together to ensure this becomes a reality.
Published: 23 March 2018
