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The World Health Organization estimates that 410,000 people developed a drug-resistant tuberculosis infection (DR-TB) in 2022, only 40% of whom were diagnosed and started on treatment—and only 63% then cured. Given all these points of failure, innovation in preventing, diagnosing and treating DR-TB cannot come fast enough. To mark World TB Day (24 March 2024) the content collection linked below highlights recent work by MSF and collaborators to help change this grim picture. The TB-PRACTECAL and endTB studies delivered robust evidence for shorter, safer, more effective drug regimens that are already saving lives worldwide. Other studies explore new approaches to preventive treatment and simpler, quicker, accurate detection of TB and drug resistance—especially among difficult-to-diagnose populations such as children and people living with HIV. But to impact DR-TB globally these innovations must become widely accessible. This requires changes on many fronts, as described in an accompanying Collection (Expanding Access to Lifesaving New TB Tools).

On 3-4 May in Nairobi, Kenya, MSF gathered staff from our projects with experts from academia, clinical practice and the non-governmental sector to consider key issues in humanitarian paediatrics. These included: Vaccination and vaccine-preventable diseases: Amid post-Covid-19 global setbacks in child vaccination coverage, sessions spotlighted recent increases in vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, potential new vaccination strategies and emergency responses, and MSF’s role in vaccine advocacy and catch-up campaigns. Nutrition: Talks covered the nexus of nutrition with other key conference topics, the latest malnutrition guidance and tools, and MSF’s priorities in nutritional care. Paediatric HIV: With half of all HIV-positive children globally not receiving antiretroviral therapy, presenters reviewed the latest paediatric testing/treatment recommendations and discussed barriers and potential solutions to implementation, nutritional challenges in children with HIV, and systems strengthening for preventing and monitoring paediatric HIV. Click below to read the abstracts. And stay tuned for more conference content, coming soon.

Complex humanitarian emergencies and other low-resource settings can be exceedingly difficult places to provide quality mental health (MH) care. Yet these environments also often have a high burden of mental health care needs. This collection presents a set of articles describing how MSF teams have adapted and evaluated ways of bringing clinically impactful MH care to neglected communities and patients—from forcibly displaced populations in northern Nigeria to Syrian refugees in Lebanon and typhoon survivors in the Philippines. It also highlights work on developing new tools for providing clinical supervision and for identifying those patients most in need of care in fragile settings, and on new approaches to delivering MH services during the Covid-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND

Prognostic tools for febrile illnesses are urgently required in resource-constrained community contexts. Circulating immune and endothelial activatio...

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Collection Content

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New tools and approaches to drug-resistant TB

MSF Paediatric Days 2024 abstracts

Mental health in humanitarian settings

Risk stratification of childhood infection using host markers of immune and endothelial activation in Asia (Spot Sepsis): a multi-country, prospective, cohort study

War wounds caused by explosive weapons in Gaza: data from a 2024 study by Médecins Sans Frontières

Feasibility and acceptability of menstrual underwear in a conflict and population displacement prone setting of Kalehe, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Newly discovered paediatric melioidosis in Mali: the tip of an African iceberg?