Despite ongoing efforts, tuberculosis (TB) remains the second leading cause of death from infectious diseases (after COVID-19) and caused 1.6 million deaths in 2021. Of the 10.6 million people estimated to have developed TB in 2021, only 6.4 million of them started treatment and were notified to National TB Programmes - with this treatment gap made even worse by the impact of COVID-19 on TB diagnosis, treatment and care. Research and insights into TB disease diagnosis, incidence and prevalence, as well as advances in implementation of early detection, prevention, treatment and care are important to inform global and public health efforts to ‘Find the missing millions’ and achieve End TB goals.
To capture advances and global efforts in this multi-disciplinary area, BMC Global and Public Health welcomed papers for our Collection entitled ‘Identifying people with tuberculosis and linking to care: finding the missing millions', guest edited by Dr. Rachael Burke, from the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust, and Dr. Finn McQuaid, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
We welcomed the submission of Research manuscripts of outstanding interest covering the breadth of multi-disciplinary studies and advances in diagnostics, epidemiology, policy, frameworks, and implementation in this area, including:
● Case finding and screening for TB
● Early detection of TB
● Novel diagnostics (including diagnostic algorithms) to identify people with TB
● Linkage of people from diagnosis to TB care
● TB disease outcomes and the impact of screening or new diagnostic strategies on these outcomes
● Modeling the impact of screening and other strategies to identify people with TB on TB epidemiology
● Economic impact and cost-effectiveness studies
● Values and preferences of people accessing TB testing or screening
● Effect of crises on TB screening, diagnosis and linkage to care (including COVID-19, conflict, humanitarian emergencies, and other challenging circumstances)
We encouraged work from local, regional and global partnerships and collaboration among scientists from multi-disciplinary fields. We asked that authors be attentive to the use of non-stigmatizing/preferred language in their manuscripts as outlined in the language guide by The Stop TB Partnership.
Submission deadline: 29 December 2023