Professor Salome Charalambous

People have the drug-sensitive TB.

About 5% have the rifampicin-resistant TB.

And then this extensively drug-resistant TB becomes a much smaller proportion.

I can't tell you.

I think it's around probably 0.5% of all TB.

But if you have it, then it's a big problem, obviously.

Okay, so we are lucky enough that there is surveillance that goes on.

And in many countries, everybody who is first diagnosed with drug-resistant TB has additional testing done to make sure that they are not resistant to other drugs.

I think where the big problem comes in is making that first diagnosis.

As also mentioned by Dr. Ismail, that of people with drug-resistant TB, only half are actually picked up in the world.

And that's where our biggest gap is.

And then part of that is because of all the problems with diagnosing that we've already mentioned.

And so you have to diagnose TB to be able to then go forward and diagnose drug-resistant TB.

The first is increasing testing.

And so there have been many strategies where what we've tried to do is identify who is at risk and then test regardless of symptoms.

We call that targeted universal testing.

So testing people regardless of whether they have symptoms because they have a risk factor.

So being a minor or being in a prison is a risk factor for TB.

So testing more

Testing more people for TB is important.