Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world’s deadliest communicable diseases.

Of the estimated 10 million people who developed TB in 2017, more than half (62 per cent) were in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific Regions. More than 900,000 of these new TB cases were diagnosed in people living with HIV.

In 2017, the largest number of new TB cases occurred in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, with 62% of new cases.

TB is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. In 2017, 1.6 million people died from TB, including 0.3 million among people with HIV.

Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases and poor treatment outcomes still needs to be addressed. In 2017, there were 558,000 cases of MDR-TB with 8.5 per cent of those cases being extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).

What is tuberculosis (TB)?

• An infectious disease caused by the bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, it commonly affects the respiratory system.
• This can result in a range of symptoms such as coughing, chest pain, weight loss and weakness, fever and night sweats.
• The bacteria is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease.

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB)

While tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics, in some countries the bacteria is becoming increasingly drug-resistant and is presenting major concerns among health workers.

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a form of TB caused by bacteria that do not respond to the two most powerful, first-line, anti-TB drugs.

Infectious diseases physician and Deputy Program Director, Health Security, Dr Suman Majumdar said, despite recent promising developments, the current available tools for TB diagnosis, treatment and prevention are not adequate to reach the goal of universal access to TB care and zero TB deaths.

“In the case of MDR-TB, patients living with this disease can no longer be ignored as untreated; this disease can kill and spread to others. Cure is possible, but current treatment involves an excruciating two-year ordeal of swallowing 20 pills a day and receiving a painful injection each day for more than eight months – the side-effects are terrible.

“Treatment needs to be coupled with close patient support and delivery of care close to their homes and livelihoods. We urgently need enhanced preventative measures, universal access to diagnostics (especially children) and a safer, shorter treatment for DR-TB.”

“What we do at Burnet is address major and complex global health issues and nothing is more in that realm than TB in terms of its burden and its impact on people, particularly its impact on the poor,” Dr Majumdar said.

“The response to TB at Burnet really deploys the unique skills that we have, from providing on-the-ground assistance and support, to training and building capacity, to conducting research which translates to inform policy, and working with partnerships at global and national level to drive an agenda of change.

“Unfortunately TB has been around since the beginning of human history and it’s still a devastating and important public health and development issue and disease.

“I’m pleased that Burnet is trying to address it, because it does need different thinking and different approaches.

“That’s something our team has been trying to bring, from care and delivery at individual level, to community level, to the national level, and also hopefully to the international and global stage as well.”

TB Forum

Burnet’s Dr Suman Majumdar is part of this initiative which aims to create closer connections between the broad range of policy makers, clinicians, patients, scientists and public health workers working for tuberculosis control and elimination in our region.

For more information visit the TB Forum website.

Current Projects

• Access Point Of Care Initiative
  Increasing access to life-saving treatments for infectious diseases through point-of-care tests.
• APPRISE - Centre for Research Excellence
  The Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Diseases Emergencies (APPRISE).
• Decision science using Optima
  Research and applications across disease areas to improve allocative efficiency.
• Demonstrating the impact of next generation Cepheid tools in TB
  GeneXpert Ultra and GeneXpert Omni for the diagnosis of tuberculosis at the microscopy centre level: PNG
• Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies
  A collaborative research program aimed at providing life-saving health care for women and children in PNG.
• HHISP: Strengthening Papua New Guinea health systems
  Burnet is a partner in the Health and HIV Implementation Services Provider (HHISP).
• HMHB - Health Services for Postnatal and Infancy Care
  Focuses on services during postnatal period and through the first 12 months in East New Britain, PNG.
• Novel reagents for the serological diagnosis of tuberculosis
  Using a drop of blood, an innovative diagnostic test may be able to detect if a patient has tuberculosis (TB).
• Rapid and accurate diagnosis of TB: New trial in PNG
  New PNG arm of a randomised control trial to trial new tuberculosis point-of-care technology.
• Scenario analysis for programmatic tuberculosis control in Western Province, Papua New Guinea
  Construction of a mathematical model to simulate the TB epidemic in Western Province of PNG, which will be used to inform programmatic responses.
• Strengthening the control of tuberculosis: China and Australia's partnership
  With funding support from the Australia-China Council, Burnet is collaborating with the Institute for Pathogen Biology in Beijing on developing novel assays for improved tuberculosis serology.
• TB-MAC Multi-modelling Exercise
  TB-MAC is an international consortium of modellers, coordinated through the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Past Projects

• ANCP: Prevention and care for drug-resistant TB in Myanmar
  Implementation and evaluation of a model of drug-resistant TB care to facilitate scale-up in Myanmar.
• Building a Centre of Excellence for Research and Training for DR-TB in Daru, Papua New Guinea
  Building operational research capacity for TB in PNG through training, mentorship and research.
• Building capacity and improving tuberculosis diagnosis in Timor-Leste
  This project seeks to improve the diagnosis of people with TB with the use of GeneXpert technology.
• Communicable disease screening and prevalence among migrants
  A study to improve communicable disease health outcomes among migrants entering Australia.
• Construction of a mathematical model for TB transmission
  Constructing a model for responses to TB in high burden countries of the Asia-Pacific.
• ESCAPE-TB: Enhanced screening and preventive therapy for TB in Daru, PNG
  A community-based model for screening and delivering preventive therapy for latent TB in Daru, PNG.
• Molecular Epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Kiribati
  To investigate the molecular and epidemiology factors associated with the ongoing TB epidemic in Kiribati and identify factors to reduce future burden.
• National TB Research Agenda Workshop for Myanmar: 4-5 September 2014
  Burnet Institute supported the National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) Myanmar to design and implement a national TB research agenda workshop to set the TB research priorities and road map for implementation for the next five years.
• RID-TB Patient Education and Counselling
  Reducing the impact of DR-TB through patient-centred education and counselling in Daru, PNG.
• RID-TB: Reducing the Impact of Drug-Resistant TB in Western Province, PNG
  The project supports an effective provincial program to reduce the impact of TB in Daru.
• The Social and Cultural Determinants of TB in Daru [SCuD-TB Daru – Study 1]
  A pilot project about people with TB and their contacts: beliefs, access to services and experiences.