20 Dec Paper Frank Cobelens in PLoS Medicine

Research on Implementation of Interventions in Tuberculosis Control in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review

Frank Cobelens, Sanne van Kampen, Eleanor Ochodo, Rifat Atun, Christian Lienhardt

Little evidence to support TB interventions in real-world, low-resource settings

Tuberculosis remains one of the major infectious diseases affecting millions of people worldwide, mainly in resource-poor countries. Over the past decade several interventions have been recommended at global level by the World Health Organization to improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of tuberculosis. In an article appearing in PLoS Medicine today researchers from, among others, the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development, the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdamand KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, assessed the evidence that is publicly available to guide the scale-up of five of these interventions at country level. In a systematic review they classified 208 scientific papers related to these five interventions by their research objectives, study design, study setting, and the generalizability of their results. The authors found that research to show the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these interventions in day-to-day health practice has been relatively rare and often limited geographically, and that few studies had been done to address operational issues that may guide the scale-up of these interventions. They conclude that more effort is needed to conduct such research in various settings where tuberculosis still poses a major threat to human health.

Citation: PLoS Medicine | December 2012 | Volume 9 | Issue 12 | December 18th, 2012

Link: PLoS Medicine

Contact:

Frank Cobelens
Department of Global Health, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD), The Netherlands
f.cobelens@aighd.org