Publication Year 28 Aug 2023
Download this article in PDF formatExecutive summary
The political declaration at the first United Nations (UN) high-level meeting on tuberculosis
(TB) held on 26 September 2018 included commitments by Member States to four new global
targets.4 One of these targets is diagnosing and treating 40 million people with TB in the 5-year
period 2018–2022. The approximate breakdown of the target is about 7 million in 2018 and
about 8 million in subsequent years. The traditional method for diagnosing TB using a light
microscope, developed more than 100 years ago, has in recent years been surpassed by several
new methods and tools. These methods are based on either the detection of mycobacterial
antigens or DNA.
The novel tools to detect the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and resistance to anti-TB
drugs call for evidence-based policy recommendations. The World Health Organization (WHO)
has published many guidelines developed by WHO-convened Guideline Development Groups
(GDGs), using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation
(GRADE) approach to summarize the evidence and to formulate policy recommendations
and accompanying remarks. However, the growing number of published guidelines makes
navigating and being up to date with the latest recommendations complex for the intended
audience which include health care personnel, national TB programmes and policy-makers.
WHO recognized the emerging need and consolidated the recommendations into one
document. This document presents recommendations from five guidelines previously published
by WHO between 2016 and 2020, as summarized in the box below. Earlier guidelines on
diagnostics that were not developed according to the GRADE approach have not been included
in this consolidated document.
Finally, recommendations for three new classes of technologies evaluated in 2020–21 are
included in the current document and constitute the 2021 update. The three classes are:
