Professor Salome Charalambous

Testing with the right test that can actually diagnose resistance is very important.

And that's what we've also discussed.

And then putting people on the right treatment.

So if you test with the right test that then identifies that there is resistance, then you can put the person on the right treatment that will then prevent

further resistance because a person who is on the wrong treatment is still coughing and still spreading and spreading the resistant bug.

In addition, we also know that TB is actually preventable.

And there's treatment that one can take to actually prevent TB.

And that is also something that we have been working on over the years to try and improve that treatment to make it easier for people to take something that can actually help them to prevent TB.

And that is at the moment, the standard is a once weekly treatment for prevention of TB that you take for a period of three months.

But we also are working quite hard at trying to find even easier options like one month treatment

Or a single treatment, you know, that you can just take one treatment and then that will then prevent you from getting TB for a period of time.

So there's a lot that's also going into place for that.

And of course, vaccines.

So there is also a lot of excitement around vaccines that are being tested at the moment to try and prevent TB.

And that would be the ultimate, you know, for a new vaccine to become available that we can then give to everybody who is at risk of TB and reduce those rates completely down.

Okay.

So there are currently two main trials that are going on that are in what we call phase three stage.

And so those phase three trials have been done actually quite rapidly because there's been a lot of urgency in the community to say, we need to get these trials done.

And they are now in the follow-up phase.

So we are actually, a lot of the people that have been enrolled in those trials have already taken the vaccines and we're waiting to get the results.