Photo credit: Dr. Suvanand Sahu, STOP TB Partnership
On the occasion of this year’s World Health Assembly held in Geneva, FHI 360’s Krishnapada (Kishan) Chakraborty participated in a side event with Quadrilateral Security Dialogue countries (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) hosted by the Permanent Mission of India in collaboration with the Stop TB Partnership. The event, “Together Against Tuberculosis – innovative responses against an ancient disease,” shared creative approaches and technologies used to address tuberculosis (TB) in the Indo-Pacific region. Kishan serves as FHI 360’s Emerging Infectious Diseases and Health Security (EIDHS) deputy country director in Bangladesh.
During the event, Kishan shared successes from introducing Truenat technology to combat TB in Bangladesh. Truenat is an easy-to-use point of care molecular test that can diagnosis TB in one hour and check for associated drug resistance. Kishan conveyed that in Bangladesh, Truenat use has accelerated the ability to identify previously undetected cases and diagnose cases earlier to contain TB transmission. To build this capacity, medical technologists from 38 sites have also been trained, along with 12 trainers to scale these efforts. These activities have contributed to detecting more than double the rate of positive cases over the last year. Going forward, introducing Truenat data connectivity for real time reporting holds significant promise for rapid TB diagnosis.
Note: The World Health Assembly (WHA) is a World Health Organization decision making body and annual forum during which member states center a specific agenda. This year’s WHA theme is “WHO at 75: Saving lives, driving health for all.”
