Presentations at 7TH SATB conference

THRU ZIM was represented at the 7th South African TB Conference in Durban by Katharina Kranzer, Collins Timire, and Claire Calderwood. It was a great conference with keynote talks covering a range of critical issues for tuberculosis (TB) programming, from scientific innovations to implementation and the importance of community involvement and advocacy to end TB. During the conference, Collins, presented his PhD research on coping strategies among people with drug resistant TB during the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe, highlighting the devastating consequences of TB for people affected by the disease and their families. Claire also presented some data from the ongoing ERASE-TB project, outlining the high prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and undernutrition among TB household contacts, and called for further research into ‘person-centred’ approaches to TB screening, which consider other causes of poor health in this population. We are looking forward to the next conference, when we will have more exciting results from our ongoing research projects.