TB patients are still to date left with either fair access to poor diagnostics or poor access to fair diagnostics.
Practitioners were asked for a list of priorities
Patients affected by latent TB and patients at risk of dying quickly were not perceived as priority populations whose diagnosis should be targeted with a new test.The survey was conducted amongst field clinicians and laboratory specialists from
medium and high burden countries (Asia, Africa, eastern Europe and Latin America).
Whilst the survey is critical of new TB tests, such as line probe assays
While line probe assays have helped accelerate diagnosis of drug resistance, their use is limited to sputum smear-positive patients, and their implementation is only possible in high-level infrastructure laboratories..
..rural health centres, which often have highly limited infrastructure and resources and are not suited for operating and maintaining real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based equipment with that design.the real problem lies in methodology
the two most vulnerable populations to TB infection, infants and people living with HIV/AIDS, are either unable to produce sputum specimens or are likely to produce paucibacillary specimens, respectively. As a result, these patient populations can only have access, when available, to diagnostics of suboptimal performance.
