Tuberculosis remains a major global challenge, writes News Wise.
For many years, the number of new cases has declined by only about two percent per year, according to Kunchok Dorjee, a physician and PhD, project leader and principal investigator of Zero TB in Kids, as well as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
A review of research from 2000 to 2025 shows that there is a lack of examples of programs that clearly reduce the disease across larger populations.
This suggests that existing methods are not always used effectively.
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At the same time, the disease is measured both by new cases and the total number of infected individuals.
According to the WHO, this makes it difficult to assess how well different interventions work.
Local experiences
In northern India, a program has been working since 2017 to test for and prevent tuberculosis among Tibetan schoolchildren.
The initiative is part of a research project led by Johns Hopkins Medicine, based on analyses and studies from the period 2000 to 2025, and published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, infections rose again when the work was paused. When the effort resumed, the number of cases declined.
Some children did not receive preventive treatment, which may be due to uncertainty among doctors, particularly when the children had other illnesses.
Infections declined
After several years of work, the results show a clear trend. The number of new tuberculosis cases among the children has dropped significantly over the period.
There are also fewer cases of latent infection, which can otherwise develop into disease later. At the same time, transmission has declined, even among children who did not receive treatment.
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The study shows that established methods such as screening and preventive treatment can have a strong impact if they are used systematically and on a larger scale.
Sources: News Wise, WHO, and The Lancet Regional Health.
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