World Tuberculosis Day, celebrated March 24, 2024, moves forward with the theme, “Yes! We can end TB.” This is seen as a message of hope, mainly according to the WHO, as 75 million lives have been saved since 2000 by global efforts to end TB. TB is preventable and curable. The WHO urges investments to scale up TB screening and preventive treatment.
We at the ISID believe that TB can be better controlled than it is now. As part of our concerted efforts to contribute to the science of ending TB, a supplement has been published to mark World Tuberculosis Day 2024.
Delia Goletti states, “In this special International Journal of Infectious Diseases issue to commemorate World TB Day, we present nine reports covering several of these aspects. We discuss several prevention issues. Prevention starts with vaccines. There have been no new TB vaccines available since the introduction of the bacille Calmette–Guerin vaccine over a century ago. Encouragingly, several promising TB vaccine candidates are currently being evaluated in phase II and III clinical trials. In parallel, we describe the immunology approaches to design vaccines and immune diagnostic tests for TB. The screening strategies are reported in terms of political commitments, as the Prevention and Systematic Screening Initiative, which is a new approach to technical assistance, focused on prevention and systematic screening, to end TB in the WHO European Region by 2030. Screening procedures and TPT are also discussed, with a focus on persons moving from high- to low-TB endemic countries."