Archived News

You can read Madhukar Pai and Katri Bertram’s new paper “Single-issue advocacy in global health: Possibilities and perils” published in PLoS Global Public Health.

Congratulations to Madhukar Pai, who has been appointed the inaugural Chair of the Department of Global and Public Health, School of Population and Global Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University! You can read the official announcement on McGill’s website.

You can read Sonia S Anand and Madhukar Pai’s new paper “Glocal is global: reimagining the training of global health students in high-income countries” published in The Lancet Global Health.

The Health Justice Initiative, a South African NGO that works on health advocacy, published the book “Health Justice Initiative Pandemics and the illumination of “hidden things” – Lessons from South Africa on the global response to Covid-19“. You can read the afterword Madhukar Pai was invited to write “Afterword: Can Global Health abandon saviourism for justice?“.

Congratulations to Dr. Lena Faust, who successfully defended her PhD thesis! Lena has been awarded the Banting Fellowship, and will start her postdoctoral fellowship at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine next month. Lena is Madhu’s 25th graduate – bravo Madhu!

You can read Petra Heitkamp and colleagues’ blog post and “graphic novel” published in PLoS Blogs “Failure to Integrate the UHC, TB, and PPPR Agendas will Squander Resources and Cost Lives“.

You can read an update from the 2019 Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis report, titled “Scientific advances and the end of tuberculosis: a report from the Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis“, from Madhukar Pai and colleagues published in The Lancet.

Congratulations to Madhu, who has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada as a Fellow! You can read the official press release from the Royal Society of Canada, and the news article from McGill University. Bravo!

Congratulations to Jacob Bigio, Mikashmi Kohli, Giorgia Sulis, Madhukar Pai and colleagues on their book chapter “The evolution of imaging and portable imaging tools to aid tuberculosis diagnosis” published in The Challenge of Tuberculosis in the 21st Century.

A warm welcome to Poshan Thapa and Luz Villa! Poshan is from Nepal, holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales, where his thesis was focused on the role and engagement of informal healthcare providers in India’s TB program. He joined us as a Postdoctoral Fellow and is working on the TBPPM and the Mi4 AMR projects. Luz is a Peruvian MD who previously worked as a research coordinator at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (including on our Xpert project among others) and as a clinical trial manager at FIND. She is starting an MSc in epidemiology. Welcome!

Read Lena Faust’s latest paper “Improving measurement of tuberculosis care cascades to enhance people-centred care” published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ latest paper “One Million Lives Saved Per Year: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of the Global Plan to End Tuberculosis, 2023–2030 and Beyond” published in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis.

You can read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ paper “Are we training our students to be white saviours in global health?” published in The Lancet.

You can read Anurag & Madhavi Bhargava’s landmark RATIONS trial papers in The Lancet “Nutritional supplementation to prevent tuberculosis incidence in household contacts of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in India (RATIONS): a field-based, open-label, cluster-randomised, controlled trial” and The Lancet Global Health “Nutritional support for adult patients with microbiologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis: outcomes in a programmatic cohort nested within the RATIONS trial in Jharkhand, India“. RATIONS is the first-ever trial to study the effect of nutritional supplementation with food baskets and micronutrients on TB incidence in 10,345 household contacts of 2,800 patients with lung TB undergoing treatment in rural India.

Read Madhukar Pai, Petra Heitkamp and colleagues’ new paper “Diagnostics to support the scaling up of shorter, safer tuberculosis regimens” published in The Lancet Microbe.

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “Canada’s role in covid-19 global vaccine equity failures” published in BMJ.

You can read “Pharmacy engagement in TB prevention and care: not if, but how?” published in BMJ Global Health, from co-authors Petra Heitkamp, Namrata Rana, Joel Klinton, Giorgia Sulis, Charity Omenka, Madhukar Pai and colleagues.

Read the latest paper from Jacob Bigio, Rishav Das, Madhukar Pai and colleagues “The inclusion of diagnostics in national health insurance schemes in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines and Viet Nam” published in BMJ Global Health.

Madhukar Pai served on the expert group that worked on a WHO AMR research agenda, which included priority research questions on DR-TB. You can read the “Global research agenda for antimicrobial resistance in human health” policy brief on WHO’s website.

A warm welcome to Surbhi Sheokand, who is joining the Pai Global TB Group! She will be contributing to the TB PPM Learning Network, COVET project, and FIND projects (Access and TB Diagnostics and Policies).

Read PLoS Blogs’ guest contributors Madhukar Pai and Katri Bertram’s blog post “Single-Issue Advocacy in Global Health: Possibilities and Perils“.

Madhukar Pai helped put together a Lancet ID series entirely focused on LMICs, “Lessons from COVID-19 to manage infectious diseases in low-income and middle-income countries“. Read his commentary “Leveraging the positives from the pandemic to strengthen infectious disease care in low-income and middle-income countries“, a synthesis of the series.

Congratulations to Lavanya Huria, Mikashmi Kohli and Angelina Sassi on graduating! It was a great opportunity to catch up with alumni and friends of the Pai Global TB Group, during the McGill Summer Institutes.

Congratulations to Angie, a Pai Global TB Group alumna, who graduated from Queen’s Medical school and won the Dr Jacalyn Duffin Award! She will start her family medicine residency at McGill in July – welcome back!

Read Anita and colleagues’ new paper “Use of standardised patients to assess tuberculosis case management by private pharmacies in Patna, India: A repeat cross-sectional study” published in PLoS Global Public Health.

Congratulations to Alice – Madhu’s very first PhD student – who received tenure and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa!

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ latest commentary “Transforming tuberculosis diagnosis” published in Nature Microbiology.

You can read Emily MacLean, Luz Villa-Castillo, Giorgia Sulis, Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “Integrating tuberculosis and COVID-19 molecular testing in Lima, Peru: a cross-sectional, diagnostic accuracy study” published in The Lancet Microbe.

Congratulations to Emily on winning a Student Publication Award at the 10th Annual TB Research Day for her paper “Bayesian latent class analysis produced diagnostic accuracy estimates that were more interpretable than composite reference standards for extrapulmonary tuberculosis test“!

Read Lena Faust and colleagues’ commentary “The state of tuberculosis surveillance in Canada” published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health.

You can read Emily MacLean, Mikashmi Kohli and colleagues’ latest paper “Updating the WHO target product profile for next-generation Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug susceptibility testing at peripheral centres” in PLoS Global Public Health.

Read Mikashmi Kohli and colleagues’ latest paper “Strengthening health systems through essential diagnostic lists and diagnostic network optimization” published in PLoS Global Public Health.

This report presents a cost-benefit analysis of increased spending on TB using impacts and costs drawn from the Global Plan to End Tuberculosis, 2023‒2030. It was authored by Madhukar Pai and colleagues.

Read Madhukar Pai and Soumya Swaminathan’s paper “India is well placed to scale innovations in tuberculosis diagnostics” in The Indian Journal of Medical Research.

Find out more about “Tuberculosis service disruptions and adaptations during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the private health sector of two urban settings in Nigeria—A mixed methods study” in Charity Oga-Omenka, Angelina Sassi, Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, Lavanya Huria, Madhukar Pai and colleauges’ latest paper published in PLoS Global Public Health.

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ latest commentary in The Lancet “Fast-tracking progress to End TB: high-level opportunities for investment and action“.

Bravo to Mikashmi, whose MSc thesis received glowing reviews! She is now officially a MSc epidemiology graduate!

Find out more about “Breaking the cycle of neglect: building on momentum from COVID-19 to drive access to diagnostic testing” in Emma Hannay and Madhukar Pai’s new paper published in eClinicalMedicine.

Congrats to Charity, who has been selected into the 2023 leadership cohort of WomenLift Health!

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “From vaccine to visa apartheid, how anti-Blackness persists in global health” published in PLoS Global Public Health.

Congratulations to Lavanya Huria who will be starting a new job in a Vancouver-based agency shortly, and to Alexandra Zimmer who successfully defended her PhD protocol!

Jacob Bigio will be continuing with our group as a PhD candidate in the epidemiology program as of September 1st, Luz Villa, an MD working as a consultant for FIND based in Lima Peru, will join our team for an MSc in epidemiology for the fall term, and Poshan Thapa, who just finished his PhD at the University of New South Wales Australia, will join us as a postdoctoral fellow later this summer.

Read Petra Heitkamp and Mohammed Yassin’s op-ed “Opinion: Engaging the private sector is vital to ending TB” published in DevEx.

A heartfelt congratulations to Lena, who was one of 24 people selected for the prestigious CIHR Banting postdoctoral award!

Read Anita Svadzian and colleagues’ new paper “Do Private Providers Initiate Anti-Tuberculosis Therapy on the Basis of Chest Radiographs? A Standardised Patient Study in Urban India” published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia, which was part of her PhD thesis.

Congrats to Mikashmi who submitted her MSc thesis today!

You can read the latest paper from Jacob Bigio, Giorgia Sulis and colleagues “A scoping review on the risk of tuberculosis in specific population groups: can we expand the World Health Organization recommendations?” published in European Respiratory Review.

You can read Madhukar Pai & colleagues’ new paper “The 1/4/6×24 campaign to cure tuberculosis quickly” published in Nature Medicine.

Bravo to Angie for submitting her MSc thesis today!

You can read “Impact of molecular diagnostic tests on diagnostic and treatment delays in tuberculosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis” from Madhukar Pai and colleagues, published in BMC Infectious Diseases.

Find the “10 best practices for equitable global health journalism” written by Madhukar Pai and Annalisa Merelli, in Quartz.

You can read the article “COVID-19 and conflicts hinder global drive to end TB” published in Harvard Public Health, for which Madhu was interviewed as an expert.

Read Sumanth Gandra and Madhukar Pai’s editorial “Antimicrobial Resistance Is Growing because of COVID” in Scientific American.

You can watch the thought-provoking speech given by Madhu during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Union conference. The transcript is also available here.

Congrats to Lavanya on submitting her MSc thesis!

You can read Madhu’s latest post in Forbes “As Tuberculosis Burden Increases Due To Covid-19, WHO Calls For Urgent Action“.

Read the latest paper from the QuTUB team “Tuberculosis diagnosis and management in the public versus private sector: a standardised patients study in Mumbai, India” published in BMJ Global Health.

Read Madhukar Pai’s latest post “Countering Failures Of Imagination: Lessons We Learnt From Paul Farmer” on 10 takeaways from Madhu’s encounters with this influential figure.

Bravo to Anita, who successfully completed her PhD! We wish her best of luck in the next step of her journey!

A heartfelt congratulations to Amrita Daftary, who has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor!

Dr. Madhukar Pai delivered a passionate speech during a special UNAIDS session on decolonizing global health “A call to address racism and colonialism in global health“, which garnered a lot of attention, at the recent IAS conference held in Montreal July 29th to August 2nd, 2022. You can watch the video online.

You can read the latest paper “Adaptations to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic by private sector tuberculosis care providers in India” from Charity Omenka, Lavanya Huria, Angelina Sassi, Petra Heitkamp, Madhukar Pai and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Read Madhu’s latest post “Young Climate Justice Activists Are Fighting For Our Collective Survival” in Forbes, where Madhu interviewed 24 young climate activists from around the world.

Heartfelt congratulations to Charity and Giorgia, who both accepted tenure track positions as Assistant Professors! Charity will be at the School of Public Health Sciences in the Faculty of Health, University of Waterloo, and Giorgia will be at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa.

Read Alexandra Zimmer and colleagues’ latest article “Making cough count in tuberculosis care” published in Communications Medicine.

The Stop TB Partnership released its Global Plan to End TB 2023-2030, with noted contributions from Jacob Bigio, Mikashmi Kohli, Emily MacLean and Alexandra Zimmer.

Read Emily MacLean and colleagues’ new paper “Bayesian latent class analysis produced diagnostic accuracy estimates that were more interpretable than composite reference standards for extrapulmonary tuberculosis tests” published in Diagnostic and Prognostic Research.

Make sure to check out Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ guide “How we classify countries and people—and why it matters” published in BMJ Global Health.

Read Madhukar Pai’s latest blog post on “Passport And Visa Privileges In Global Health” in Forbes.

You can read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “Funders: The missing link in equitable global health research?” published in PLoS Global Public Health.

Congratulations to Madhu, whose Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Epidemiology and Global Health was renewed for another 7 years! You can read the announcement in McGill Reporter.

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “Global health education in high-income countries: confronting coloniality and power asymmetry” published in BMJ Global Health.

Check out these news items, with contributions from Madhukar Pai:

• ‘The most selfish thing we can do,’ say Quebec experts? Push for global vaccine equity
• Certaines pandémies ne finissent pas, ​​elles deviennent invisibles aux plus nantis
• Canada must focus on global vaccine access to curb COVID-19, expert warns MPs

Along with the piece “Tuberculosis Is the Oldest Pandemic, and Poverty Makes It Continue” published in Scientific American.

You can read Joel Klinton and colleagues’ letter to the editor “Engaging private pharmacies to help end TB in India” published in The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Emily was awarded a CIHR postdoctoral fellowship – congratulations!

You can read the systematic review “Most common reasons for primary care visits in low-and middle-income countries: A systematic review” from Jacob Bigio, Emily MacLean, Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, Lavanya Huria, Mikashmi Kohli, Madhukar Pai, Pierrick Adam and colleagues, published in PLoS Global Public Health.

Read the latest paper from Jacob Bigio, Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, Lavanya Huria, Tripti Pande, Madhukar Pai and colleagues “Engaging pharmacies in tuberculosis control: operational lessons from 19 case detection interventions in high-burden countries” published in BMJ Global Health.

Congratulations to Alex, who has been awarded a CIHR doctoral fellowship!

Congratulations to Alex on being selected for the 2022 Global Health Scholars – Graduate Program!

Congratulations to Emily MacLean for successfully defending and earning her PhD!

You can read a selection of articles, editorials, news and blog posts from the team for World TB Day:

• “When it comes to stopping tuberculosis, what is actually “missing”?“, an article by Farahdiba Zalika Fatah, Jennifer Furin and Madhukar Pai in PLoS Global Health
• “The intersecting pandemics of tuberculosis and COVID-19: population-level and patient-level impact, clinical presentation, and corrective interventions“, a collaborative article by Keertan Dheda, Madhukar Pai and colleagues in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine
• “It is not too late to achieve global covid-19 vaccine equity“, an analysis by Gavin Yamey, Madhukar Pai and colleagues published in BMJ
• “Special Collection: Diagnosing Tuberculosis“, a Cochrane special collection of systematic reviews on tests for tuberculosis disease and tuberculosis drug resistance curated by Mikashmi Kohli and colleagues
• “Global Health Is Broken, But Young People Plan To Repair It“, a blog post by Madhukar Pai published in Forbes
• Congratulations to Jody Boffa for winning the Dr Margaret Becklake award for outcomes research in the postdoctoral category for her paper “Quality of care for tuberculosis and HIV in the private health sector: a cross-sectional, standardised patient study in South Africa” published in BMJ Global Health
• “Canada is failing to track an ancient but deadly infectious disease“, a piece by Lena Faust published in Healthy Debate

You can read Lena’s review of “Phantom Plague” by Vidya Krishnan published in the PLoS Blog Posts.

Read Madhukar Pai’s post “Disrupting Global Health: From Allyship To Collective Liberation” published in Forbes, which generated a lot of responses, including this one.

You can read the editorial by Madhukar Pai and Heather J. Zar published in The New England Journal of Medicine “Childhood Tuberculosis — Time for Shorter and Differentiated Treatment“, which accompanies the article “Shorter Treatment for Nonsevere Tuberculosis in African and Indian Children“.

Read the piece “The Pandemic Is Following a Very Predictable and Depressing Pattern” by Nadia A. Sam-Agudu, Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, Fredros Okumu and Madhukar Pai, published in The Atlantic.

Read the latest paper from Emily and team “Integrated testing for TB and COVID-19” published in Med.

Read Madhu’s latest Forbes post “Double Agents In Global Health“.

Read the latest paper from the South Africa standardized patient project “Prescribing practices for presumptive TB among private general practitioners in South Africa: a cross-sectional, standardised patient study” published in BMJ Global Health.

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “Tracking changes in national BCG vaccination policies and practices using the BCG World Atlas” published in BMJ Global Health. You can access the BCG World Atlas’s 3rd edition on our website.

Listen to Madhu’s latest interview on CBC Radio One’s The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay on Omicron and vaccine equity.

See what Nobel laureates, like Malala Yousafzai, and Madhu’s answers to NPR’s question “If you could wish for one thing in 2022, what would it be?“.

Congratulations to Lavanya for winning the 3-minute thesis competition of McGill’s EBOH department!

Read Madhukar Pai and colleagues’ new paper “Covid-19’s Devastating Effect on Tuberculosis Care — A Path to Recovery” in The New England Journal of Medicine.

You can read “Biomarkers That Correlate with Active Pulmonary Tuberculosis Treatment Response: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. This was a collaborative effort that involved Alexandra Zimmer (first author) along with Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, Emily MacLean, and Mikashmi Kohli.

Read the new commentary piece from Madhukar Pai and Manu Prakash “We are playing whack-a-mole with variants – and the virus is winning” published in the Telegraph.

Madhu and team have been awarded a new CIHR grant “Artificial intelligence-based analysis of cough for COVID-19 screening in Montreal“. This project will be done in collaboration with the CHUM. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Paulami who is now an MSc grad! Congratuations as well to Lena, who successfully defended her PhD thesis protocol!

Read (or listen to) Madhu’s interview with Ari Shapiro on NPR, about vaccine inequity and the emergence of new COVID-19 variants.

Congratulations to Mikashmi Kohli and Emily MacLean for their contributions to the TAG Pipeline report “Tuberculosis Diagnostics – Steady progress to bring TB diagnosis closer to the point of care“.

Read Madhukar Pai and Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija’s editorial “Vax the world” published in Science.

Read the QuTUB team’s latest paper “Simulated patients and their reality: An inquiry into theory and method” published in Social Science & Medicine.

Economic Impact produced the report “The role of diagnostics in covid-19 and future pandemics” as part of The Economist Group’s Vaccine Ecosystem Initiative. Congratulations to Madhukar Pai, who was one of the experts who contributed to this report.

Congratulations to Madhu, who was one of the Clarivate highly cited researchers of 2021! You can read IDIGH’s news item to find out more.

Congratulations to Paulami for successfully completing and submitting your MSc thesis!

Congratulations to Lena Faust, Alexandra Zimmer and Petra Heitkamp for their contributions to the Stop TB Canada report “The Impact of COVID-19 on Canadian Tuberculosis Programs“!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post in Forbes “Covid-19 Wreaks Havoc With The Best Laid Plans To End Tuberculosis” on the WHO’s 2021 Global TB Report.

The new journal PLoS Global Public Health, with Madhukar Pai as Editor in Chief, is now live! Make sure to check out the inaugural issue.

Congrats to Sophie for her contribution to “Clinical standards for the assessment, management and rehabilitation of post-TB lung disease“, published in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Congratulations to Mikashmi Kohli, Pierrick Adam and Madhukar Pai for their contributions to “The Lancet Commission on Diagnostics: Transforming Access to Diagnostics“. You can also read Madhu’s op-ed on the issue in Forbes “A Grim Diagnosis – Half The World’s Population Has Limited Access To Diagnostics“.

You can read “The diagnostic performance of novel skin-based in-vivo tests for tuberculosis infection compared with purified protein derivative tuberculin skin tests and blood-based in vitro interferon-γ release assays: a systematic review and meta-analysis“, a new paper from Lena Faust, Claudia Denkinger and colleagues, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

A big thank you to Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, who managed the TB REACH project with her colleagues for 2 years. We wish her best of luck!

You can read Madhukar Pai’s latest blog post “Charity And Good Intentions Will Not End The Covid-19 Pandemic” published in Forbes.

Read “Tuberculosis in times of COVID-19“, a new paper from Alexandra, along with Joel Klinton, Charity Omenka, Petra Heitkamp, Madhukar Pai and colleagues, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

You can read “Factors Affecting Motivation among Key Populations to Engage with Tuberculosis Screening and Testing Services in Northwest Tanzania: A Mixed-Methods Analysis“, a new paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, to which Jacob Bigio, Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez and Tripti Pande contributed.

You can read “Computer-aided X-ray screening for tuberculosis and HIV testing among adults with cough in Malawi (the PROSPECT study): A randomised trial and cost-effectiveness analysis“, a new paper from Madhu and colleagues, published in PLoS Medicine.

You can read “A Multi-Faceted Approach to Tuberculosis Active Case Finding among Remote Riverine Communities in Southern Nigeria” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, to which Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez and Jacob Bigio contributed.

Read Zain Chagla and Madhukar Pai’s correspondence piece “COVID-19 boosters in rich nations will delay vaccines for all” published in Nature Medicine.

Read Sophie’s latest paper “TB case fatality and recurrence in a private sector cohort in Mumbai, India” published in The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Listen to the interview Madhu gave to Dr. Marc Siegel about the state of the pandemic and vaccine distribution.

Read Jacob, Madhu and colleagues’ latest paper “Asia emerges as a hotbed of diagnostic innovations for tuberculosis” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Congratulations to Giorgia for receiving the Outstanding Graduate Student Peer Mentor Award in McGill’s EBOH department!

The WHO published its latest TPP “Target product profile for next-generation tuberculosis drug-susceptibility testing at peripheral centres“, to which Emily and Mikashmi contributed. Congrats!

Listen to the interview Madhu gave to Rosemary Barton on CBC’s The Current about COVID-19 and booster shots, or read the transcript.

Congratulations to Alex for winning a McGill Faculty of Medicine studentship award!

Read Alex and colleagues’ latest paper “Can we predict the severe course of COVID-19 – a systematic review and meta-analysis of indicators of clinical outcome?” published in PLoS One.

Read Madhu’s latest post “Decolonizing Global Health: A Moment To Reflect On A Movement” published in Forbes.

You can read “Chest X-ray analysis with deep learning-based software as a triage test for pulmonary tuberculosis: an individual patient data meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy” published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, from Madhu and colleagues.

Congratulations to Madhu who has been appointed to the WHO’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for TB in the South-East Asia Region (June 1), as well as to the WHO’s Advisory group on Tuberculosis Diagnostics and Laboratory Strengthening (July 19). Find out more here.

Congratulations to Nathaly and her TB REACH colleagues on their new paper “Impact of COVID-19 on TB detection in the private sector in Nepal” published in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Read Joel Klinton’s latest blog post “COVID-19 Response Needs a Course Correction to Attain Vaccine Equity” published in The Public Health Insight.

Read Lena Faust and Courtney Heffernan’s op-ed “Residential school deaths from tuberculosis weren’t unavoidable – they were caused by deliberate neglect” published in The Globe and Mail.

Read the short correspondence from Madhukar Pai and colleague “Choosing Wisely for COVID-19: ten evidence-based recommendations for patients and physicians” published in Nature Medicine.

Read Giorgia’s final PhD thesis paper “Sales of antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine in India during the COVID-19 epidemic: An interrupted time series analysis” published in PLoS Medicine.

Read the latest paper from Alex, Petra and colleagues “Facility-based directly observed therapy (DOT) for tuberculosis during COVID-19: A community perspective” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Madhu gave McGill’s Convocation Address for the Spring 2021 class of graduates. Watch his sobering call to action.

Congratulations to Madhukar Pai and Gavin Yamey, whose article “How COVID-19 Is Revolutionizing Health Care Around the World” is featured on the cover of a Time100 Health Special issue!

Read the main paper “Quality of care for tuberculosis and HIV in the private health sector: a cross-sectional, standardised patient study in South Africa” from the project “Standardized patients: An approach to understanding the realities of South Africa’s TB care cascade“, published by Jody Boffa, Angie Salomon, Madhukar Pai, Amrita Daftary and colleagues in BMJ Global Health.

Congratulations to Madhu, who is now co-editor in chief of PLoS Global Public Health, a new Open Access journal for diverse research addressing global public health challenges and inequities!

You can read “Diagnostic accuracy of point-of-care ultrasound for pulmonary tuberculosis: A systematic review“, from Jacob Bigio, Mikashmi Kohli, Joel Klinton, Emily MacLean, Madhukar Pai and colleagues, published in PLoS One.

Read Lena Faust and Leigh Raithby’s op-ed on the BCG vaccine “The 100th Anniversary Of A Vaccine Against A Deadly Disease: Not A Cause For Celebration” in HealthAffairs.

Madhukar Pai and colleagues just published “Addressing power asymmetries in global health: Imperatives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic“, which you can read in PLoS Medicine.

In Nature Microbiology, you can read Madhu’s blog post “10 reasons why everyone should advocate for Covid-19 vaccine equity“. In short, without widespread and equitable access, the pandemic will not end.

Read the latest paper from Madhukar Pai and colleagues “Using the COVID-19 pandemic to reimagine global health teaching in high-income countries” published in BMJ Global Health.

Congratulations to Lavanya and Angelina who were both selected to the 2021 Global Health Scholars – Graduate Program!

Find out where you can publish op-eds on global health by reading Madhu’s post “Where Can I Publish My Global Health Blog Post or Op-Ed?” in Nature Microbiology.

Read Sophie’s latest paper “Case fatality and recurrent tuberculosis among patients managed in the private sector: A cohort study in Patna, India“, part of her PhD thesis, published in PLoS One.

The 8th annual TB research day was held on World TB day. Congratulations to the 3 members of our team won prizes for their publications!

• Emily MacLean: 2020 Margaret Becklake Award for “Diagnostic accuracy of stool Xpert MTB/RIF for the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis in children: a systematic review and meta-analysis“
• Sophie Huddart: 2021 Margaret Becklake Award for “Tuberculosis case fatality in India: a systematic review and meta-analysis“
• Madlen Nash: 2021 Jonathan Meakins Award for “Deep learning, computer-aided radiography reading for tuberculosis: a diagnostic accuracy study from a tertiary hospital in India“

The WHO released its consolidated screening guidelines on tuberculosis today. Congratulations to Mikashmi Kohli, and our colleagues Claudia Denkinger, Samuel Schumacher, Sandra Kik & Zhi Zhen Qin for their contributions!

Here are a few posts from our team for World TB day:

• Jennifer Furin and Madhukar Pai’s op-ed in The Telegraph “We went all-out to tackle Covid-19 – TB needs the same approach“
• Robyn Waite and Madhukar Pai’s “Opinion: To recover from COVID-19, donor support for tuberculosis must increase” in Devex
• Madhukar Pai’s post in Forbes “As Covid-19 Derails TB Progress, Advocates Demand Renewed Commitment To End TB“
• Lena Faust and Alexandra Zimmer’s op-ed in Policy Options “What Canada needs to do to end TB“

The 2021 update of the Cochrane “Special Collection: diagnosing tuberculosis” was published on the Cochrane Library for World TB Day. Special congratulations to Mikashmi Kohli for her hard work and commitment to produce this valuable resource!

You can read Senjuti Saha and Madhukar Pai’s latest paper “Can COVID-19 innovations and systems help low- and middle-income countries to re-imagine healthcare delivery?” in Med.

Congratulations to Giorgia who successfully defending her PhD thesis on March 22nd!

Read the latest commentary from Madhu and colleagues “Learning from COVID-19 to reimagine tuberculosis diagnosis” published in The Lancet Microbe.

Read the latest comment paper from Madhu and colleagues “Promoting diagnostics as a global good” published in Nature Medicine.

Read the commentary from Giorgia Sulis and Sumanth Gandra “Access to antibiotics: not a problem in some LMICs” related to the study “Community-based antibiotic access and use in six low-income and middle-income countries: a mixed-method approach“. Both were published in The Lancet Global Health.

Check out Madhu’s latest blog post “We Must Recognize Women For Their Valuable Contributions To Medicine And Science” published in Forbes on International Women’s Day.

Read “Xpert Ultra versus Xpert MTB/RIF for pulmonary tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance in adults with presumptive pulmonary tuberculosis” published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, with contributions by Mikashmi Kohli and Madhukar Pai.

Madhu is organizing a short online course to introduce epidemiologic concepts to health/science journalists which will take place May 3 to May 7, 2021. The course is reserved for journalists, but you can find out more here.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “We Can Use The Pandemic To Reimagine Global Health Teaching” published in Forbes. You can access all his teaching material on the teachepi website.

Read Madhu’s post and interview with Paul Farmer “Ebola, Covid-19 And The Elusive Quest For Global Health Equity” in Forbes.

The WHO published a guidance on updated critical concentrations for susceptibility testing for rifampicin. Congratulations to Mikashmi Kohli and Vaidehi Nafade for their contribution!

Congratulations to Tripti who will join Pact as an M&E Officer later this month! The entire team is thankful for all the work she’s done for the past few years for the TB REACH project. Congratulations too to Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, who will be taking over as Lead Program Officer for this project.

Read Madhu’s blog post “To Improve Access To Diagnostics, Countries Must Adapt The WHO Essential Diagnostics List“, following the WHO publishing its 3rd edition of the list which now includes COVID-19.

Read Madhu’s take on the US reengaging with the WHO “As America Engages With WHO Again, An Overwhelming Sense Of Relief And Hope” published in Forbes.

In November 2020, Seye and Madhu published “Will global health survive its decolonisation?” in The Lancet Global Health. Prompted by their paper, the journal recently published an editorial on the matter as well.

Read Madhu’s latest post “A Pandemic Defined By Failures: Who Can Hold Nations Accountable?” published in Forbes.

You can read Madhu’s latest blog post “What India Can Learn From Covid-19 To Build A Healthier Nation” in Forbes.

Read “Global tuberculosis awards must do better with equity, diversity, and inclusion“, a collaborative paper from the team published in The Lancet.

You can check out Lena Faust’s piece “Canadian Tuberculosis R&D Funding in 2019” written with Adam R. Houston, which provides highlights from the Treatment Action Group Tuberculosis Research Funding Report.

Read Jacob Bigio, Angelina Sassi and colleagues’ latest paper “Improving the quality of tuberculosis care in the post-pandemic world” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Read Madhu’s latest post in Forbes “People Power, Not Powerful People, Can Help End Inequality” on Ben Phillips’s book “How to fight inequality“.

Read “Finding the missing millions: lessons from 10 active case finding interventions in high tuberculosis burden countries” published in BMJ Global Health, a paper from Tripti Pande with many co-authors from our team.

Read Charity’s latest paper “Ease and equity of access to free DR-TB services in Nigeria- a qualitative analysis of policies, structures and processes” published in the International Journal for Equity in Health.

Check out Tripti’s interview on being impactful in your job, in which she shares 3 pieces of advice for her fellow global health leaders.

Read Madhu’s latest opinion piece on “How Prestige Journals Remain Elite, Exclusive And Exclusionary” published in Forbes.

Read Madhukar Pai and Seye Abimbola’s new paper “Will global health survive its decolonisation?” published in The Lancet.

The McGill Summer Institute is pleased to announce it will be back in 2021! In order to safely welcome as many participants as possible, the Summer Institute will be 100% online from May 31 to June 18, 2021. Registrations will open in January 2021 – save the date!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Men in Global Health, Time To ‘Lean Out’” on how men must find ways to create space for diverse voices and perspectives.

Congratulations to the TB/COVID Working Group – ACTION, Global Coalition of TB Activists, Global TB Caucus, KANCO, McGill International TB Centre, RESULTS, Stop TB Partnership Affected Community Delegation, Stop TB Partnership Developing Country NGO Delegation, TBpeople, TBPPM.org, and We Are TB who won the 2020 Stop TB Community Award in the global category! And a special mention to Petra Heitkamp and Alexandra Zimmer who played an important role in this effort.

Read Madhu and colleagues’ new editorial “India’s syndemic of tuberculosis and COVID-19” published in BMJ Global Health.

Congratulations to Charity Omenka, who is starting as a postdoctoral fellowship in the group following the successful completion of her PhD. Charity will be managing the COVID Impact on Private Health Markets project, which will examine the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on TB services in private healthcare in 3 countries – India, Indonesia and Nigeria.

In partnership with Women Political Leaders, Women in Global Health (WGH) and FIND launched their report “Putting health in their hands: testing and women’s empowerment mean better health for all” in a virtual event on November 9th. Our team was happy to contribute to this report, and you can read Madhu’s blog post “With Access To Testing, Women Can Take Charge Of Their Own Health And Deliver Testing” in Forbes.

Read Joel, Charity and Petra’s new paper “TB and COVID – Public and private health sectors adapt to a new reality” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Read Madhu’s interview “Pandemic Or Not, Experts Need To Be Self-Aware And Humble” with philosophy professor and author Nathan Ballantyne on the dangers of ‘epistemic trespassing’ – where experts in one area jump into another (e.g. Covid-19) and muddy the waters – published in Forbes.

Congratulations to Sophie and Charity, who successfully defended their PhD theses! Sophie is now starting a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF, and Charity will manage the new COVID Impact on Private Health Markets project as a postdoctoral fellow in the Pai Global TB Group.

Read Tripti Pande and colleagues’ new paper “Islands of Tuberculosis Elimination: An Evaluation of Community-Based Active Case Finding in North Sumatra, Indonesia” published in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, and Charity Omenka and colleagues’ new paper “Commentary: Lessons from the COVID-19 global health response to inform TB case finding” published in Healthcare.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “It’s Time To Use Covid-19 Innovations And Systems To Reimagine TB Care” published in Forbes.

Read the latest paper from Lena Faust, Alexandra Zimmer, Mikashmi Kohli, Jody Boffa, Madhukar Pai and colleagues on “SARS-CoV-2 testing in low- and middle-income countries: availability and affordability in the private health sector” published in Microbes and Infection.

Find out more about the DR-TB care cascade in Nigeria in Charity’s paper “Understanding the gaps in DR-TB care cascade in Nigeria: A sequential mixed-method study” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Read Anita, Giorgia and colleagues’ new paper “Differential yield of universal versus selective drug susceptibility testing of patients with tuberculosis in high-burden countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis” published in BMJ Global Health.

Read Madhu’s latest piece in Forbes “As We Fight The Coronavirus Pandemic, We Cannot Ignore Non-Communicable Diseases“.

As of October 15, Madhukar Pai will hand over the directorship of the McGill International TB Centre to Dick Menzies, who is also the director of the WHO Collaborating Centre in TB Research at McGill University. Madhu has led the TB Centre since July 2018, and the entire community is very grateful for his leadership over the past 2 years!

Read the latest paper from our team and colleagues “Availability of essential diagnostics at primary care public clinics in Peru” published in Microbes and Infection.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post on the deadly combination of COVID and TB “Tuberculosis And Covid-19: Fighting A Deadly Syndemic” published in Forbes.

We’re very happy to announce that Madhu has received a new grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on TB services in private healthcare in 3 countries – India, Indonesia and Nigeria. You can read McGill’s Faculty of Medicine article, and check out our website to find out more.

Read Giorgia’s latest paper “Antibiotic overuse in the primary health care setting: a secondary data analysis of standardised patient studies from India, China and Kenya” published in BMJ Global Health.

Watch Madhu’s interview on NDTV about how Canada has dealt with the pandemic, COVID-19 reinfection, and the situation in India.

Read the latest paper published in the European Respiratory Journal “Diagnostic accuracy of centralised assays for TB detection and detection of resistance to rifampicin and isoniazid: A systematic review and meta-analysis” from Mikashmi, written in collaboration with current and past team members.

Congratulations to Anita Svadzian and Giorgia Sulis for winning a Faculty of Medicine studentship! And well done to Sophie Huddart on successfully submitting her PhD thesis! Our team would also like to welcome Angie Sassi, who will start her MSc in the Fall. Joining her will be Lavanya Huria and Mikashmi Kohli who will also start their MSc, as well as Alexandra Zimmer, who will begin her PhD. Find out more about their journey on our team’s page.

Watch Madhu’s interview with BBC India on TB and COVID-19.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post in Forbes “Journalists Need To Get It Right: Epidemiology Training Can Help“, based on his experience teaching two epidemiology courses for health and science journalists in India and Africa.

Read “Advances in Molecular Diagnosis of Tuberculosis” published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a great collaboration between current members of the team (Emily MacLean, Mikashmi Kohli and Madhu) and alumni from our research group (Anita Suresh, Samuel Schumacher and Claudia Denkinger).

Read the latest paper from Anita, Nathaly, Madhu and their co-author “Global health degrees: at what cost?” published in BMJ Global Health.

TAG recently launched their new “An Activist’s Guide to Tuberculosis Diagnostic Tools” (alongside their “An Activist’s Guide to Treatment for Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis“), to which many members of our team contributed, and which includes citations of our work. Congratulations!

You can read Madhu’s latest opinion piece in Nature Medicine: “Covidization of research: what are the risks?“.

Check out Madhu’s latest post “Fighting The Good Fight: Outbreak Lessons From Kerala And Malaysia” published in Forbes, which highlights positive examples of outstanding leadership and coordinated response against the virus.

Read the latest paper from Toyin “A three-marker protein biosignature distinguishes tuberculosis from other respiratory diseases in Gambian children” published in EBioMedicine, which was part of our project Improving the Diagnosis of Childhood Tuberculosis in High Burden Settings.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Burnout, A Silent Crisis In Global Health” published in Forbes.

Congratulations to Jody and the University of KwaZulu-Natal team who were awarded a TB REACH Wave 8 grant! Find out more in the Stop TB Partnership press release.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “To Succeed In Global Health, We Need To Find The Outliers” published in Forbes.

Read Charity’s latest paper “Factors influencing diagnosis and treatment initiation for multidrug-resistant/rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis in six sub-Saharan African countries: a mixed-methods systematic review” published in BMJ Global Health, which also features Paulami Sen as a co-author.

Read the latest paper from Emily MacLean and colleagues “Diagnostic accuracy of serological tests for covid-19: systematic review and meta-analysis” published in BMJ.

Read Madhu and colleagues’ latest paper “Quality of tuberculosis care in the private health sector” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

The WHO updated its consolidated guidelines on TB, which include contributions from both Madhu and Mikashmi. Read the press release, and access the guidelines on their website.

Read the latest op-ed from Madhukar Pai and Shibu Vijayan “TB during COVID-19” published in The Hindu.

Read “Ensuring continuity of tuberculosis care during the covid-19 crisis” published in BMJ opinion, a collaborative piece from our team’s Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez, Tripti Pande, Petra Heitkamp and Madhukar Pai.

Read Emily MacLean’s post “The value of diagnostic tests to ease the burden of tuberculosis” published in Gates Open Research’s blog.

Madhu crowd-sourced a list of over 60 inspiring, must-watch movies focused on global health topics – see the list in his post published in Nature Microbiology.

Read the latest blog post from Jacob Bigio and Madhukar Pai “How Covid is making it tougher to tackle TB, AIDS, malaria and child health” published in The Print.

Read Giorgia and colleagues’ most recent paper “Antibiotic prescription practices in primary care in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis” published in PLoS Medicine.

Congratulations to Lena who was awarded a CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship doctoral award!

We warmly welcome Joel, a physician and scientist, who is joining our TB PPM team!

Congratulations to Mikashmi who was awarded the very first Margaret R. Becklake Fellowship in Respiratory Research Fellowship! You can find out more about Dr. Becklake‘s legacy on Wikipedia, and read an article on McGill’s Med e-News.

Read Madhukar Pai and Sonali Vaid’s blog post “Can the coronavirus crisis guide India towards an equitable, robust health system?” on CNBC TV 18.

Read “Silenced Voices in Global Health” published in ThinkGlobalHealth, from Madhukar Pai and colleagues.

Read the paper “Fourth generation QuantiFERON-TB Gold-Plus: What is the evidence?” published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Jacob Bigio’s first publication as part of the Pai Global TB Group!

Find out why “U.S. Withdrawal From WHO Is Sad For Global Health And Bad For America” in Madhu’s blog post in Forbes.

Read Madhukar Pai and Jishnu Das’ opinion piece “How can India address big surge for health care after coronavirus lockdown?” published on DevEx.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “AIDS, TB And Malaria Set To Get Deadlier Due To Coronavirus” in Forbes.

Read the latest paper from the Standardized Patient project in South Africa “Missing men with tuberculosis: the need to address structural influences and implement targeted and multidimensional interventions” published in BMJ Global Health.

Congratulations to Tripti and TB REACH grantees on their publication “Mobilising community networks for early identification of tuberculosis and treatment initiation in Cambodia: an evaluation of a seed-and-recruit model” in ERJ!

Read Lena and colleagues’ latest paper “How are high burden countries implementing policies and tools for latent tuberculosis infection? A survey of current practices and barriers” published in Health Science Report.

To counter the media hype, misinformation and confusion around BCG vaccination for COVID-19 (currently unproven to have any protection), Madhu and his team have published a series of op-eds and media interviews:
– Universal BCG vaccination and protection against COVID-19: critique of an ecological study (Nature Microbiology)
– BCG against Coronavirus: Less hype and more evidence, please (Forbes)
– Why a decades-old TB vaccine is getting attention in the fight against Covid-19 (Stat News)
– Does the BCG vaccine work against coronavirus? We just don’t know (Wired)
– No proof yet that BCG benefits against coronavirus, says expert (Q&A in The Hindu)
– Gender & COVID-19: why diversity is critical to solving global health emergencies (WomenLift webinar)
– An old vaccine vs. COVID-19 (The Take, by Al Jazeera)
– A skeptic’s guide to ecologic studies during a pandemic (Forbes)
– The coronavirus pandemic: impact of the lockdown on tuberculosis care (Podcast from the Centre for Policy Research)

Madhu also wrote about ‘Covidisation’ of academic research in Nature Microbiology. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has inspired a flood of research activities, special funding opportunities, and potential career paths. But this ‘Covidisation’ can come at the risk of undermining other areas of research and scholarship.

Other quotes and citations of interest:
– Among the most vulnerable to coronavirus: The tens of millions who carry HIV and tuberculosis (Washington Post)
– Is BCG effective against coronavirus? (India today)
– Study that suggests BCG vaccine may protect against Covid-19 is flawed – TB experts (BizNews)
– After the pandemic: How will COVID-19 transform global health and development? (Devex)
– Can BCG vaccine protect against Covid-19? Here’s why the excitement needs to be tempered (ThePrint)
– Considering BCG vaccination to reduce the impact of COVID-19 (The Lancet)

Congrats to Sophie for winning a CIHR postdoctoral fellowship!

Read Madhu’s piece “Tuberculosis: the story after the Primer“, a commentary on 4 years after publishing the tuberculosis primer.

Read Pierrick and colleagues’ latest paper “Appointment Reminders to Increase Uptake of HIV Retesting by At-Risk Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Study in Thailand” published in the Journal of the International AIDS Society.

Congratulations to Giorgia who is part of the third cohort of Global Health Scholars – Graduate program (McGill Global Health Programs)!

Congrats to Paulami who was awarded a CIHR 2020 Canada Graduate Scholarship!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post published in Forbes “Can We Reimagine Global Health In The Post-Pandemic World?“.

Find out more about how the pandemic is affecting TB in South Africa in the latest paper from Jody, Giorgia, Amrita, Madhu and colleagues “COVID-19 and tuberculosis in South Africa: A dangerous combination” published in the South African Medical Journal.

There is definite worry that the current pandemic will derail the goal to end these Big Three killers by 2030. Read Madhu’s post “AIDS, TB And Malaria: Coronavirus Threatens The Endgame” in Forbes to find out more.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “COVID-19 Coronavirus And Tuberculosis: We Need A Damage Control Plan” in Forbes, which highlights how we’ll have a lot of work to do to control the damage in the coming years.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Global Health Needs To Be Global & Diverse” published in Forbes.

This past February, Madhu gave a lecture entitled “Global Health Research Needs More Than A Makeover” during UCSF grand rounds. Click on the link to watch the video (or visit the video section of our website).

Read Madhu’s latest opinion piece “Let’s Worry About Diagnostic Capacity, Not Just During Outbreaks” published in Forbes.

Read Emily’s blog post “Lateral flow LAM testing for TB in PLHIV – why the slow implementation?” published in Nature Microbiology.

Read Emily’s piece “It’s not about you: perspectives from initial site visits in Karnataka, India” published in McGill Perspectives on Global Health, about her time at two tertiary hospitals in India.

Check out Madhu’s latest blog post “Global Health Technologies: Time To Re-Think The ‘Trickle Down’ Model” published in Forbes.

Read the latest paper from Danielle, Tripti, Paulami, Amrita, Madhu and colleagues “User experience and patient satisfaction with tuberculosis care in low-and middle-income countries: a systematic review” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Read the latest paper from Diane, Emily, Mikashmi, Madhu and colleagues on “Adoption and uptake of the lateral flow urine LAM test in countries with high tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS burden: current landscape and barriers” published in Gates Open Research.

The Spring Travel Award competition is now open. Trainees (students and postdoctoral fellows) in the fields of tuberculosis and other mycobacterial research can apply for travel support (including registration fees) to present their own research at national and international scientific meetings and/or conferences. Apply now! Deadline is March 4.

Read Giorgia and Madhu’s latest perspective piece “Isoniazid-resistant tuberculosis: A problem we can no longer ignore” published in PLoS Medicine.

Read Sophie and colleagues’ latest paper “Tuberculosis case fatality in India: a systematic review and meta-analysis” published in BMJ Global Health.

You can read Maddee’s thesis publication in Nature Scientific Reports “Deep learning, computer-aided radiography reading for tuberculosis: a diagnostic accuracy study from a tertiary hospital in India“. A big thanks to Tripti, Sophie and other colleagues for their contribution.

Congratulations to Sophie who won the 2nd prize at the 3 Minute Thesis competition at the department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health today!

The 2020 edition of the Summer Institute is now accepting applications! It will features eight diverse courses held June 1-12, 2020. Its engaging course structure offers an avenue for attendees to convene, debate solutions, and gain an improved understanding of cutting-edge research methods. Most courses are three days to allow participants to take multiple offerings in combination, and have more opportunities to learn from our expert faculty. For more information and to register, consult the website.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “AIDS Activism, A Playbook For Global Health Advocacy” published in Forbes. Make sure to also watch the documentary or read the book “How to Survive a Plague“.

See the latest paper “Initiative for Promoting Affordable and Quality Tuberculosis Tests (IPAQT): a market-shaping intervention in India” from Madhukar Pai and colleagues, published in BMJ Global Health.

Read Madhu’s latest post “Global Health Research Needs More Than A Makeover” published in Forbes, a thoughtful – and thought provoking – reflection on global health research.

We’re happy to welcome Nathaly as the new Program Officer for the TB REACH project. She’ll be joining Tripti, the Lead Program Officer, as part of the knowledge management team for this project. We’d also like to welcome Jacob, a new Research Associate joining our team. A trained physician, Jacob recently completed a Master of Science in Control of Infectious Diseases. Find out more about our new team members on our team’s website.

Read Jody and the SP South Africa project team’s latest paper “Why we need to evaluate the quality of tuberculosis care in South Africa’s private health sector” published in the South African Medical Journal.

Congratulations to Sophie and Mikashmi who both won TB Centre/Global Health Programs travel awards in the Fall competition!

See Pierrick and Madhu’s latest commentary “Implementation of Xpert MTB/RIF in high-burden countries: voices from the field matter” published in Public Health Action.

Read the latest paper from Vaidehi and the rest of the team on “Over-the-counter antibiotic dispensing by pharmacies: a standardised patient study in Udupi district, India“, published in BMJ Global Health.

We’re very excited that the TB•PPM Learning Network was launched on October 30th, 2019, at the PPM Working group symposium during the Union Conference in Hyderabad.

If you haven’t already, please sign up to join us in this vibrant online community united around the cause to End TB.

See also the WHO release on the launch of our community of practice.

Read the latest paper from Vaidehi, Paulami and Madhu “Global health journals need to address equity, diversity and inclusion” published in BMJ Global Health. You can also read this editorial.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post on the publication of the latest Global TB report “Fighting TB: Slow Progress Should Ignite Action” published in Forbes.

Congratulations to Pierrick and his colleagues for their new paper “Impact of Counseling Methods on HIV Retesting Uptake in At‑Risk Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Study” published in AIDS and Behavior.

Congratulations to Madhu who received an honorary mention from the REACH awards! See their website to see all the finalists and special mentions.

Read the latest Journal of Infectious Diseases supplement on how to generate evidence on TB dx: “Guidance for the Evaluation of Tuberculosis Diagnostics That Meet the World Health Organization (WHO) Target Product Profiles: An Introduction to WHO Process and Study Design Principles“, by Madhu and colleagues.

Congratulations to Lena who won the first Dr. Robert S. Remis Graduate Fellowship in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, in support of outstanding graduate students pursuing research in infectious diseases epidemiology!

Congratulations to Mikashmi for winning an IDIGH travel award!

Read Madhu’s post on “global health consulting malpractice“. You can also download the slides summarizing the 10 fixes.

We’d like to thank Danielle for her valuable contribution as Lead Program Officer for the TB REACH Knowledge Management project over the last 3 years. She will soon be joining Resolve to Save Lives, a Foundation in NYC. We wish her best of luck in the next phase of her career!

On September 16 and 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Programme and the WHO Collaborating Centre in TB Research at McGill University, Montreal, Canada held a two-day technical consultation on research on latent TB infection. Around 40 participants attended the meeting representing the TB research community, national TB programmes, civil society, technical and implementation partners, and donor agencies.

The QuTUB team has published a paper on how to conduct standardized patient studies on quality of care in BMJ Global Health, as well as a manual and toolkit, which offers practical advice, forms, instruments, etc. You can also read the accompanying editorial, and find out more about the QuTUB project on its website.

Be sure to watch Madhu’s latest lecture on Quality of TB Care!

Read Madhu and colleagues’ latest paper on CAD “A systematic review of the diagnostic accuracy of artificial intelligence-based computer programs to analyze chest x-rays for pulmonary tuberculosis” published in PLoS One.

The Pai Global TB Group is happy to welcome 3 new members to its team! Paulami Sen, who was working with the group as a junior assistant, will start an MSc under Madhu’s supervision. We’re also welcoming Charity Omenka as a Project Manager for the McGill International TB Centre and the new Private Provider Engagement project, as well as Petra Heitkamp as the Community Manager for the same project. Find out more about them on our website. Welcome!

Check out Lena’s case study “The Roll-out of Child-friendly Fixed-dose Combination TB Formulations in High-TB-Burden Countries: A Case Study of STEP-TB” published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health.

Read the latest paper “Essential medicines and essential diagnostics: a package deal” from Madhukar Pai, Kamini Walia
and Catharina C Boehme published in The Lancet Public Health.

Read Madhu’s latest paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases “Improving the cascade of global tuberculosis care: moving from the “what” to the “how” of quality improvement“.

Read Elizabeth A. Talbot and Madhukar Pai’s latest paper “Tackling drug-resistant tuberculosis: we need a critical synergy of product and process innovations” published in The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. Also published today in Lung India is Kavitha Saravu and Madhukar Pai’s paper “Drug-resistant tuberculosis: Progress towards shorter and safer regimens“.

Congratulations to Emily who won the Relève étoile Louis-Berlinguet August prize of the FQRNT for her publication “A systematic review of biomarkers to detect active tuberculosis“!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Better Therapies For TB Are Here, But They Will Not Deliver Themselves” published in Forbes.

Read the latest paper from Hojoon Sohn and colleagues published in BMC Medicine “Informing decision-making for universal access to quality tuberculosis diagnosis in India: an economic-epidemiological model“.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Archives of Failures in Global Health” on the necessity of compiling a list of failures in global health, published in Nature Microbiology.

Read Madhu’s review of the book “The Mentoring Guide” by Vineet Chopra and colleagues, entitled “How can we become better mentors & mentees?“.

We’re very pleased to announce the start of a new project led by Madhu and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, entitled “Learning Network in support of Private Provider Engagement in TB”. Visit our website to find out more.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “WHO List of Essential Tests Gets An Upgrade” published in Forbes.

Congratulations to Maddee Nash and Vaidehi Nafade for completing their MSc, and to Paulami Sen for completing her BSc! We’d also like to wish best of luck to Diane Singhroy and Angie Salomon who will both start medical school in the fall!

Congratulations to Danielle for co-authoring this paper, and supporting the TB REACH grantee in Cambodia in this interesting approach to active case finding: Acceptability of active case finding with a seed-and-recruit model to improve tuberculosis case detection and linkage to treatment in Cambodia: A qualitative study.

Amrita will be taking a new position at York University, in Toronto, as of July 1. The Pai Global TB Group team would like to say a big thank you to Amrita for all her contributions in the past few years, and wish her the best of luck!

Congratulations to Angie for her new publication on quality of antenatal care in Nigeria “Detecting and managing hypertensive disorders in pregnancy: a cross-sectional analysis of the quality of antenatal care in Nigeria” published in BMC Health Services Research.

The 5th McGill Summer Institute in Infectious Diseases and Global Health was held June 10-21 this year. It welcomed 550 participants, including 150 faculty members, from 43 countries. Below are pictures from the Advanced TB Diagnostics course, and the new Quality of TB Care course. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Read our latest publication on our quality of TB care work using SPs “Lessons on the quality of tuberculosis diagnosis from standardized patients in China, India, Kenya, and South Africa” published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Check out The Lancet Respiratory Medicine’s spotlight on our work on quality of TB care and re-imagining TB care “Finding the missing millions affected by tuberculosis is one thing; treating them is another“.

Read the latest Cochrane review from David Horne, Mikashmi Kohli and colleagues “Xpert MTB/RIF and Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra for pulmonary tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance in adults“, and check out the news story from LSTM “Xpert Ultra test for diagnosing TB now included in Cochrane Review“.

Our IC-IMPACTS project Engaging Community Pharmacists in India to Enhance Early Detection of Tuberculosis generated a lot of coverage, including two new items: “Community pharmacists can help track tuberculosis patients, study finds” in The Indian Express, and “How Pharmacies Can Help India’s Battle Against TB” in India Spend.

Dr. Pierrick Adam is joining the Pai Global TB Group as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Pierrick completed his medical degree with a specialised medical studies diploma in Public Health and Social Medicine in Paris (France) in 2018 – find out more about his background and experience on our team’s website. Welcome Pierrick!

Read Madhu’s latest post in Forbes “Can Pharmacies Improve Global Health Delivery By Taking Tests Closer to People?” to find out.

Read our team’s two latest papers “What will it take to eliminate drug-resistant tuberculosis?” published in The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and “Self-reported tuberculosis in India: evidence from NFHS-4” published in BMJ Global Health.

Read the blog post from Madhukar Pai, Catharina Boehme and Ilona Kickbusch “Diagnostics are essential for universal health coverage to succeed” published in Stat.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “A Resource For Global Health Innovators” published in Forbes.

Read the latest paper from the IC-IMPACTS project Engaging Community Pharmacists in India to Enhance Early Detection of Tuberculosis, published in BMJ Global Health: “Can community pharmacists improve tuberculosis case finding? A mixed methods intervention study in India“. You can also check out some news stories drawing on this publication in HindustanTimes, The Hindu, and The Telegraph India.

Congratulations to Emily who won 1st prize for oral presentations at the IDIGH research day! Congratulations also to Anita for getting the Global Health Scholars award this year! And to Angie who won the oral presentation prize at CORE Research Day!

Read or listen to Mikashmi’s interview published in Health Issues India on why essential diagnostics matter in realizing universal healthcare.

The Economist Intelligence Unit released the report “It’s Time to End Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis – The case for action” today. You can also read Madhu’s op-ed on the subject published in Forbes “Drug-Resistant TB: A Clear And Present Danger“.

Salomé is joining the team as an undergraduate Global Health Scholar, and will be working on the SP study in South Africa over the summer. Welcome!

Read Charity’s latest paper on “Rates and timeliness of treatment initiation among drug-resistant tuberculosis patients in Nigeria – A retrospective cohort study” published in PLoS One.

There is a new Postdoctoral Researcher position in the Pai Global TB Group. This fellowship will focus on research on Public-Private Mix and TB, private provider engagement, quality of TB care in the private health sector, and contribute to a learning network around private provider engagement and TB. To find out more, read the complete job posting. If you know someone who might be interested, please share!

Read the interview with Amrita on gender inequality harming the fight against TB, published in Global Citizen.

Read “Diagnostic accuracy of stool Xpert MTB/RIF for the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis in children: a systematic review and meta-analysis” from Emily, Giorgia, Madhu and their co-authors, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

Read Jody’s latest paper “When prevention is dangerous: perceptions of isoniazid preventive therapy in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa” published in Public Health Action.

On March 26-29, ICAP and WHO hosted an invitation-only workshop entitled “HIV Differentiated Service Delivery: Opportunities and Challenges for TB Prevention and Care” in Lusaka, Zambia, in collaboration with the Zambia Ministry of Health. The meeting convened global experts and teams from seven of the CQUIN learning network member countries, including representatives from ministries of health, PEPFAR agencies, implementing partners and civil society. At this event, Angie a systematic review synthesizing evidence on interventions that impact linkages to diagnosis and treatment initiation for HIV and TB in LMICs. The title of her talk was “TB/HIV Linkage: What works, and how do we know?”. Congratulations!

Read the QuTUB’s team new paper “Use of standardised patients to assess gender differences in quality of tuberculosis care in urban India: a two-city, cross-sectional study” published in The Lancet Global Health. You can also read the accompanying editorial by Ronelle Burger.

The McGill International TB Centre’s TB Research Day was held on March 22nd this year. Congratulations to:

• Sophie Huddart for winning the Margaret Becklake Prize for Best Paper in Health Outcomes Research by a Graduate Student for her paper “Knowledge about tuberculosis and infection prevention behavior: A nine city longitudinal study from India“
• Emily MacLean for winning a travel award

Read Madhu’s editorial on The Lancet TB Commission in the Huffington Post, and “A human-rights approach is essential to end the global TB epidemic” in The Conversation.

Ahead of World TB Day, The Lancet Commission on tuberculosis was published today. Congratulations to Amrita, Tripti, Danielle and Madhu who were all involved!

Read “N-TB: A mobile-based application to simplify nutritional assessment, counseling and care of patients with tuberculosis in India” from Tripti and colleagues in India, published in The Indian Journal of Tuberculosis. You can also download the app for free on GooglePlay.

Read the new paper “Antiretroviral switching and bedaquiline treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis HIV co-infection” by Amrita and her colleagues published in The Lancet HIV.

Ahead of the 2019 TB day, the McGill International TB Centre is unveiling its brand new logo! Congratulations to our very own Paulami Sen for her winning design!

Read Madhu and colleagues’ new paper “Health care gaps in the global burden of drug-resistant tuberculosis” published in the The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Read the article “Constructing care cascades for active tuberculosis: A strategy for program monitoring and identifying gaps in quality of care“, by Madhu and colleagues, recently published in PLoS Medicine.

Madhu has been awarded McGill University’s Principal’s Prize for Public Engagement through Media (category: academic staff). This award recognizes those who are exceptionally engaged with the media or public, extending the reach and influence of scientific research. Read the article in the McGill Reporter. Congratulations!

Read Emily’s latest paper “A systematic review of biomarkers to detect active tuberculosis” published in Nature Microbiology. You can also read a blog about the article on their website.

Last November, Amrita was named to the first-ever list of Canadian women leaders in global health. For the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the MUHC published an article highlighting her contributions and her 2 fellow nominees – Dr. Nitika Pant Pai and Dr. Theresa Gyorkos. Find out more on the MUHC’s website.

Check out Madhu’s latest blog post in Scientific American “Stopping the World’s Biggest Infectious Killer” to find out more.

The Spring 2019 McGill International TB Centre Travel Awards competition is now open! Students and postdocs who are members of the Centre can apply here. The deadline is February 24. Good luck!

Congratulations to Jody who has been appointed as Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Nursing and Public Health (Centre for Rural Health), College of Health Sciences, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa! Her appointment is for 3 years, until January 2022.

Read our team’s latest paper “Tuberculosis: treatment failure, or failure to treat? Lessons from India and South Africa” published in the latest edition of BMJ Global Health.

In the latest issue of The Lancet Global Health (February 2019), 3 former trainees of the Pai Global TB Group were featured: Samuel Schumacher, Claudia Denkinger and Alice Zwerling. We’re very proud of our former colleagues!

If you’ve ever submitted a manuscript for publication, or if you’ve acted as a peer reviewer for a journal, you’ll want to read Madhu’s latest blog post “Dear Editor (An Authors’ Wish List to Medical Journal Editors)” published in Nature Microbiology!

Read Madhu’s latest paper “Quality: The missing ingredient in TB care and control” with Zelalem Temesgen published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Read the latest systematic review from our colleagues “Proximate determinants of tuberculosis in Indigenous peoples worldwide: a systematic review” to be published in the Lancet Global Health in January, to which our own Danielle contributed.

On December 7th, Amrita gave a Graduate Studies Seminar at the University of Waterloo: “Engaging pharmacies in the tuberculosis care cascade: lessons learned from an intervention study in India”. Find out more on the university’s website.

As of November 17th 2018, the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) has designated the McGill International TB Centre as a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre for Tuberculosis Research. This designation will be effective for the next 4 years. A great recognition for our TB Centre!

Read Paulami, Mikashmi and Madhu’s new paper “Industry Perspectives on the WHO Essential Diagnostics List” published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Congratulations!

A new Global Health Diagnostics community has been launched: www.ghdxonline.org. In this new community, professionals ranging from clinicians, nurses, laboratory professionals, policy-makers, researchers, implementers, advocates and health educators share questions, successes, and lessons learned to advance the field of global health diagnostics. Sign up today!

This year, the McGill Summer Institute in Infectious Diseases & Global Health are offering a selection of their most popular courses in a shortened 3-day intensive format, in addition to an original 5-day course. Participants now have the opportunity to take up to 4 different topics during the two weeks. Find out more and register on the Summer Institute’s website.

On November 24, Madhu gave his first TEDx talk at the McCord Museum (Montreal, Canada). The theme this year for all speakers and performers was “Climbing Ladders”, and you can watch the video online.

Congratulations to Jody and Lena who were both awarded RI MUHC studentships for the 2019 academic year!

Madhu recently asked via twitter “If there is 1 book that you would like all global health students to read, it would be…”. Get the list of recommendations via his recent post on Nature Microbiology!

Congratulations to Amrita, who has been featured on the Canadian Women in Global Health List! As one of the nominees, she will be included in a publicly available document intended to assist journal editors, conference organizers, funders, policy makers, and any other institutions in broadening and diversifying their networks to include Canadian women leaders in global health. Find out more on the Canadian Society for International Health website.

Read Madhu’s latest post in Nature Microbiology “To scale-up TB preventive therapy, we need to bundle tools & improve access“.

Read Maddee’s latest blog post on TB up North in Nature Microbiology, written with Rachel Kiddell-Monroe: “Making the case for child-friendly TB treatment for Inuit: challenging Canada’s double standard“. Check out also the CBC news story about her efforts to help with TB elimination in the Inuit communities!

Read Sophie’s latest paper “Knowledge about tuberculosis and infection prevention behavior: A nine city longitudinal study from India” recently published in PLoS One.

Madhu and Jishnu recently published an opinion piece on the importance of understanding how private operators diagnose and treat TB patients “More potent healers” in The Indian Express.

Congratulations to Emily who published a paper entitled “Diagnosing active tuberculosis in people living with HIV: an ongoing challenge” in Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS. Her work was also cited at the Union conference, and featured in this new video on the Bm2Dx!

You can read Madhu’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology “TB Conferences: We Must Do Better” on how TB conferences can have greater impact.

On October 25th, the Center for Nutrition Studies was officially inaugurated at Yenepoya Medical College in Mangalore, India. The Center is led by Dr. Anurag Bhargava, an alumni of the Pai Global TB Group. The Center’s creation was supported by the McGill International TB Centre, and its N-TB app launched earlier this year was created with the help of Tripti Pande from the Pai TB Group. A great international effort!

We’d like to officially welcome Alexandra Gatto to the Pai TB Group’s extended family! Alexandra will manage the McGill International TB Centre under the leadership of Madhu, and also handle Amrita’s research portfolio. Welcome!

Read Madhu’s latest post “TB Care: Reimagined” published in Nature Microbiology.

Read Madhu’s latest opinion piece “To eliminate TB we need imagination and ambition” published in The Conversation.

Congratulations to Tripti who has been named to the Dean’s list at Université Laval for her MSc and thesis!

FIND has announced a call for trial partners is now open for the prospective evaluation of a novel urine test for TB. Find out more on their website; the deadline to submit is January 31st 2019.

Amrita presented a workshop on “Social Interventions to Increase TB Treatment Adherence” at IDWeek on October 3rd. Find out more on IDWeek’s website.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post on Nature Microbiology reviewing Paul Thorn’s “Diary of a Modern Consumptive”: “The crushing loneliness of having tuberculosis“.

Read the latest paper from Amrita and colleagues, written by Stephanie Law and published in the European Respiratory Journal, entitled “Interventions to improve retention-in-care and treatment adherence among patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis: a systematic review“.

Read Mikashmi’s latest paper “Availability of essential diagnostics in primary care in India” published today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Congratulations! You can also read the corresponding editorial in Microbes and Infection.

Madhu and Nandita participated in the UN High Level Meeting to End TB held in New York City September 26th. See them in action during a media panel, and a stakeholder panel!

A major paper on our SP study in India is now published in PLoS Med: “Variations in the quality of tuberculosis care in urban India: A cross-sectional, standardized patient study in two cities“. See some of the media coverage, and find out more about the project on our website.

Ahead of the United Nations’ first High Level Meeting to address and help end the tuberculosis epidemic, BMC is featuring a series of podcasts, including one from Madhu. Enjoy!

Read Amrita’s latest paper “To End TB, First-Ever High-Level Meeting on TB Must Address Stigma” published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Congratulations to Jody who became a postdoctoral fellow on September 15th! Jody will continue to work with Amrita on the TB care cascade project in South Africa.

Congratulations to Toyin, Emily, Madhu and our collaborator for their new systematic review “Biomarkers for diagnosis of childhood tuberculosis: A systematic review” published in PLoS One! This paper is part of the project Improving the diagnosis of childhood TB in high burden settings.

Mikashmi, Paulami and Madhu’s editorial on “Improving access to essential tests for infectious diseases” will be published in Microbes and Infection (now in press). Congratulations!

Sophie contributed to the paper “Upfront Xpert MTB/RIF testing on various specimen types for presumptive infant TB cases for early and appropriate treatment initiation“, published in PLoS One. As she puts it: “This is a deeper dive into the infant TB cases diagnosed with Xpert. Almost all were diagnosed using non-sputum samples and 5% were rif resistant. We also observed an 11% mortality in TB cases. This is certainly the largest cohort of infant TB I’ve come across and it paints a scary picture!”

The report of the HQSS Commission was published today in the Lancet GH. TB is prominently used throughout the report and you can see that by searching for tuberculosis in the PDF. Some of our team’s work is also cited. For this, we can thank Danielle and Tripti, who worked hard with the HQSS team on the TB aspects. Look for their names in the acknowledgements section! Check out also Madhu’s blog post on the subject in Nature Microbiology.

Lena is joining the Pai TB Group to do a PhD, with Madhu serving as her supervisor. Welcome Lena!

Congratulations to Mikashmi and her co-authors for their new Cochrane systematic review “Xpert MTB/RIF assay for extrapulmonary tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance“!

Congratulations to Amrita who is Co-Investigator on a new NIH R21 award: Evaluating a multimodal behavioral intervention to reduce stigma in HIV/drug resistant TB in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (PI: O’Donnell MR, Columbia University)!

Congratulations to Giorgia and Madhu for their new editorial “Tuberculosis in Pregnancy: A Treacherous Yet Neglected Issue” published in this month’s edition of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada.

Read Lena’s latest paper “Recommendations for the screening of paediatric latent tuberculosis infection in indigenous communities: a systematic review of screening strategies among high-risk groups in low-incidence countries” published in BMC Public Health.

Here are 5 new papers from the team published this summer:

• “Market penetration of Xpert MTB/RIF in high tuberculosis burden countries: A trend analysis from 2014-2016“, with Danielle, Tripti and Madhu
• “A list to cement the rightful place of diagnostics in healthcare“, from Madhu
• “New strategies for inpatients with HIV and tuberculosis“, from Madhu
• “Prevalence of diabetes mellitus amongst hospitalized tuberculosis patients at an Indian tertiary care center: A descriptive analysis“, from Tripti, Sophie and Madhu
• “Regionalization and the Closure of 52 Hospitals in Rural Saskatchewan“, from Danielle

Congratulations to everyone!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post in HuffPost to encourage greater Canadian engagement with the UN HLM “Canada’s indifference to tuberculosis has put Inuit at great risk“.

Read Angie’s latest comment article “Grand challenges in humanitarian aid” recently published in Nature. Congrats!

After 5 years, Marcel Behr is stepping down as Director of the McGill International TB Centre, making way for a new team to lead the Centre. Madhukar Pai will step in as Director, and the roles of Associate Directors will be taken on by Amrita Daftary (Global/Population Health), Faiz Ahmad Khan (Clinical Research) and Maziar Divangahi (Fundamental Research). A big thank you to Marcel and congratulations to the new leadership team! You can also read McGill’s story on this.

On June 26, Amrita delivered a talk entitled “A qualitative approach to assessing the drivers of HIV acquisition in Afro-Caribbean immigrants to Canada” as part of the CERIUM Course / Workshop “Migration et santé publique à l’ère de la mondialisation : quelles approches et données pour analyser les enjeux actuels? / Immigration and Public Health in the Era of Globalization: What Approaches and Data Analyses Methods should be used?”.

Congratulations to Vaidehi, Maddee, Sophie and the other co-authors for their work on “A bibliometric analysis of tuberculosis research, 2007–2016” recently published in PLoS One! Find out more about the project on our Website.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post on ‘Factfulness’, a book by Hans Rosling “Hans Rosling continues to dazzle and educate us with his brilliant book” published in Nature Microbiology.

The 2018 Summer Institute in Infectious Diseases and Global Health was held from June 11-22, and welcomed over 680 participants from 53 countries. Below are pictures of the Advanced TB Diagnostics course attendees, and the NTP managers and TB advocates who attended the course. Material from the course will be posted shortly on our TeachEpi website. Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed!

Read the latest editorial from Hannah Dias, Madhukar Pai and Mario Raviglione published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research: “Ending tuberculosis in India: A political challenge & an opportunity“.

On June 14, 2018, Jody gave 3 talks at the 5th SA TB Conference 2018: “Is prevention better than cure? Perceptions of isoniazid preventive therapy in KwaZulu-Natal”, “The role of agency in the implementation of isoniazid preventive therapy: Lessons from oMakoti in uMgungundlovu District, KZN” and “The effectiveness of untargeted 6-month isoniazid preventive therapy to reduce tuberculosis incidence among people living with HIV with and without antriretroviral therapy in KwaZulu-Natal”. Find out more in the conference’s program.

The 6th Annual TB Centre Research Day on June 1, 2018 was a great success, and included a keynote address by President Natan Obed of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in front of more than 150 attendees. Our very own Emily was rewarded with 2 prizes. She won 1st prize for a CORE, and the ALFA Travel Award for being the overall winner of the afternoon. Congrats!

On June 4, 2018, the United Nations organized an interactive civil society hearing and invited Madhu to speak on a panel on innovations to end TB. To read what he covered in his speech, read his latest blog post in the Huffington Post “We Need To Science The Shit Out Of Tuberculosis“. You can also see the video on the UN’s website.

Read Madhukar Pai and Kamini Walia’s op-ed in The Hindu “It begins with diagnosis“.

We’d like to officially welcome Diane and Paulami to our group! Diane completed her PhD in Virology and Immunology at McGill University in 2016, and was a Scientific and Technical Advisor for Knowledge Ecology International. She’s joining the group as a Research Associate. Paulami is completing her Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology & Immunology at McGill University, and is joining us for the summer as a Junior Assistant. Welcome!

Paul Farmer recently visited McGill University to deliver the Victor Dzau and Ruth Cooper-Dzau Distinguished Lecture in Global Health. Read some key takeaways from Madhu’s conversation with him in Nature Microbiology: “Insights from an inspiring global health leader“.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Health care is an essential human right – and so is a proper diagnosis” published in The Conversation.

Our team’s new and improved teachepi website has been officially launched! The teachepi website was designed to bring together useful resources for learning and teaching epidemiology: lectures, case studies, calculation tools, and much more. Visit it today!

The IDIGH Program is pleased to announce the 2018 Trainee Travel Awards competition to support students and post-doctoral fellows who wish to present their research findings at national and international conferences. To apply, complete the online application before June 30.

Read our team’s latest paper “New TB tools need to be affordable in the private sector: The case study of Xpert MTB/RIF” published ahead of print in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health.

Read Madhu’s latest post in Nature Microbiology “The Science of Improvement: TB Cannot Afford to Lag Behind“.

We’d like to officially welcome Angie to our group! She recently completed her MPH in epidemiology at the University of Toronto, and has also interned at Grand Challenges Canada. You can see her profile on the team’s page.

Congratulations to Amrita Daftary who has been awarded an FRQS Junior 1 salary award, Emily MacLean who was awarded an FRQS doctoral fellowship, and Maddee Nash who has been awarded a CIHR Master’s fellowship and an FRQS masters fellowship!

At the latest edition of the Canadian AIDS Conference (CAHR 2018), Amrita gave a talk entitled “Sexual Encounters Among Afro-Caribbean Immigrants Post Arrival in Canada: a Reconstructed Vulnerability to HIV?”. The conference booklet can be accessed here.

Read the latest paper from Amrita and colleagues “Pilot evaluation of a second-generation electronic pill box for adherence to Bedaquiline and antiretroviral therapy in drug-resistant TB/HIV co-infected patients in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa“, published in BMC Infectious Diseases.

Read Emily and Madhu’s latest paper published in Clinical Chemistry: “Urine Lipoarabinomannan for Tuberculosis Diagnosis: Evolution and Prospects“.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “Ego is the Enemy, especially for Academics” in Nature Research Microbiology.

Congratulations to Emily and Sophie, who were both selected for the first cohort of Global Health Grads at McGill University! They will receive funding to support conducting research internationally in a low or middle income country or in Northern Canada.

On World TB Day, the Center for Nutrition Studies, Yenepoya University, India, in association with McGill International TB Centre, Canada, released N-TB, an android mobile based application for the nutritional assessment and counselling of adult patients with TB. Read all about it in Madhu’s post in Nature Microbiology, and download for free on GooglePlay.

What is Madhu’s worst career mistake? What does he wear to work every day? What’s his guiltiest pleasure? Find out in his interview in BMJ Confidential!

Read Madhu’s latest opinion piece “Hope rises for a world free of TB” published in The Conversation for World TB Day.

Read Amrita and her colleagues’ latest paper published in Public Health Action: “Training social workers to enhance patient-centered care for drug-resistant TB-HIV in South Africa“.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “India’s tuberculosis research contributions get international recognition” published in Nature Microbiology.

Read Madhu’s latest paper “Surrogate endpoints in global health research: still searching for killer apps and silver bullets?” published in BMJ Global Health.

Congratulations to Sophie for her contributions to this new pediatric Xpert study published in PLoS One “Accelerating access to quality TB care for pediatric TB cases through better diagnostic strategy in four major cities of India“.

The McGill International TB Centre/Global Health Travel Awards are intended to support trainees (graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) in the fields of tuberculosis and other mycobacterial research. These awards up to $1,500 each are for conference travel to national and international scientific meetings to present the trainee’s own research. Apply online; the deadline is April 6th.

Madhu’s latest blog post in Nature Research Microbiology deals with polio, which hasn’t been eradicated: “‘Terry Fox on Wheels’ Reminds us that Polio is Still Around“.

Read Giorgia’s latest paper on “Xpert MTB/RIF as add-on test to microscopy in a low tuberculosis incidence setting” published in the European Respiratory Journal.

Dr. Mikashmi Kohli joined the Pai Global TB Group February 1st, as a postdoctoral fellow. You can find out more about her background on our team page. Welcome Mikashmi!

Maddee and Sophie, along with the rest of their co-authors, recently published “Performance of the Xpert® HIV-1 Viral Load assay: A systematic review and meta-analysis” in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Congratulations!

Read Giorgia’s latest blog post “Delamanid—a broken dream for patients with MDR-TB?” published on BMJ.

Congratulations to Madhu for being selected by the UC Berkeley School of Public Health to be honored as one of their 75 most influential public health alumni over their entire 75 year history! The Pai Global TB Group team is extremely proud, and honored, to be working with him!

Read the latest paper from Sophie, Vaidehi and Madhu “Tuberculosis: a Persistent Health Challenge for India” published in Current Epidemiology Reports. Congratulations to the team!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post “A Global Health Book that Provokes, Instructs and Inspires” in Nature Microbiology, about Joia Mukherjee’s book “An Introduction to Global Health Delivery”.

Congratulations to Giorgia for her recent paper “Policies and practices on the programmatic management of LTBI: a survey in the African Region” published in The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Congratulations to Maddee who was awarded an RI MUHC Studentship and Fellowship for 2018!

Congratuations to Madhu and all the co-authors for “Tuberculosis“, a Nature Reviews Disease Primer which received a ‘Highly cited paper’ designation by Web of Science. The Primer is one of the top 1% of papers of similar age in the field of clinical medicine.

The new Global Health Scholars & Grads program is now launched! Find out more about the opportunities for undergraduates, and graduate students.

This 3rd edition of the free Let’s Talk TB booklet has grown to include 18 chapters, written by 20 co-authors, and has come a long way since 2014, when the first edition was released with just 5 chapters. The 3rd edition includes new chapters on MDR-TB, adverse effects of TB drugs, adherence monitoring strategies, and nutritional support. Download it free on the website.

You can also read Madhu’s blog post on the subject, in Nature Microbiology.

Check out Amrita’s new oped “#GenderAnd FIRST PERSON: The stigma of Tuberculosis is a harsh reminder of the social injustices faced by women“, in The Indian Express.

This competition is open to all current and prospective postdoctoral fellows working in global health. Find out more on their website, and apply online. The deadline to apply is March 31^st, 2018. For any question, contact Kristin Hendricks at the Global Health office.

Read Madhu’s opinion piece in Nature Microbiology “Surrogate endpoints in global health research: searching for silver bullets?“.

Read Amrita’s latest paper “Household context and psychosocial impact of childhood multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa” published with colleagues in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Read Sophie Huddart’s inspiring (and sassy) blog post in Nature Microbiology, calling on the Canadian Government to spend more on international aid in “I spend more on international aid than the Canadian government“, which was also featured in McGill’s Med e-news newsletter.

Read the latest publication “Quality of tuberculosis care by Indian pharmacies: mystery clients offer new insights” from Madhukar Pai, Jishnu Das and Rosalind Miller, in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases. This paper has already been covered by News18.com.

Read a feature article on the Improving the Diagnosis of Childhood Tuberculosis in High Burden Settings project on the MUHC’s website.

Read – and listen to – Toyin’s interview on Radio Canada International, about the GCC & Merck-funded project on Improving the Diagnosis of Childhood Tuberculosis in High Burden Settings.

Read Maddee’s latest post “To end the HIV epidemic, we need to close the innovation gap” for World AIDS Day on Nature Microbiology.

Our TB REACH project was recently featured in the McGill Faculty of Medicine newsletter. Kudos to the team!

Read the latest publication from Toyin published in Reference Module in Biomedical Sciences “Diagnosis of Childhood Tuberculosis“. This marks the team’s 25th publication of the current calendar year!

Today, Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) publicly announced 20 grants that had been awarded, including Toyin’s pediatric TB test grant! You can find out more about this project to develop blood-based TB test for kids on our website.

Read Maddee and Vaidehi’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology “To eliminate TB, we need new tools and investments!“.

You can read a review of the team’s SP studies in TB in the latest issue of the National Medical Journal of India “Standardized patient method in tuberculosis research“.

In Moscow, WHO released this report on TB R&D “Global Investments in Tuberculosis Research and Development: Past, Present, and Future“, featuring the work of Vaidehi, Maddee and Sophie who are among the co-authors of the core writing team. Kudos!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology “We cannot End TB without political commitment“.

Read Amrita Daftary and Ellen Mitchell’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology “Combating Tuberculosis Stigma: The time is now“.

Read Madhu’s latest blog post on Nature Microbiology “A Deep Dive into India’s Health“, which looks at The Lancet’s comprehensive analysis of India’s health.

Based on her MPH field work, Danielle’s paper “Structured identification of response options to address environmental health risks at the Agbogbloshie electronic waste site” was just published. Congratulations!

From Madhu’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology: “Rana Awdish, a physician, had the chance to die. Luckily for us, she did not. Her book “In Shock” is a must read for patients and doctors alike.” Read more here!

Congratulations to Madhu, who is now an Adjunct Professor at ITRC of ICMR (India) for 2017-2018!

Read Madhu’s latest post in Nature Microbiology: “TB patients endure tortuous pathways and broken care cascades“.

See Grand Challenges Canada’s showcase of our Quality of TB Care work “Mystery patients are exposing gaps in the quality of tuberculosis care around the world“.

Read Amrita’s latest commentary “Fighting TB stigma: we need to apply lessons learnt from HIV activism” published in BMJ Global Health.

Read Madhu’s latest post in Nature Microbiology “2017 Global TB Report: a Story of Dead and the Missing“.

Congratulations to Emily, Maddee and Vaidehi who won Global Health Travel Awards! Kudos to Vaidehi who actually won 2 of them 🙂

Read Madhu’s latest post in Nature Microbiology “Mystery patients reveal weaknesses of tuberculosis care in rural China“.

Congratulations to Amrita and her co-investigators, Faiz Ahmad Khan and Nathalie Boulanger, who were awarded a Steinberg Fund for Interdisciplinary Global Health Research for their project “A Collaborative Partnership to Develop Smoking Cessation Interventions in Nunavik”!

Intrigued? Find out more by reading Madhu’s editorial on the original study on Hero Rats for detecting TB.

Read Sean Sylvia’s latest publication on “Tuberculosis detection and the challenges of integrated care in rural China: A cross-sectional standardized patient study” in PLoS Medicine. The commentary on this paper is also available.

You can view Madhu’s plenary talk on quality of care, which was live streamed at the 48th Union conference in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Read Giorgia’s latest blog post in BMJ Global Health on “Addressing the global health funding gap: Italy needs to step up!“. You can also see it in McGill’s Perspectives on Global Health blog.

Congratulations to Amrita for the special TB stigma supplement she edited in the International Journal on Tuberculosis and Lung Disease!

Read and watch an interview with leading experts, including Madhu, by NDTV, a leading news channel in India.

The TB Diagnostics Critical Pathway website has been launched! Read more about this new resource on the Stop TB Partnership website. The TB Diagnostics Critical Pathway is complemented by the Diagnostic Pipeline Tracker, which maps the status of diverse TB diagnostic solutions.

Read Madhukar Pai and Sarah E.Ahlbrand’s review of Kathryn Lougheed’s “Catching Breath: The Making and Unmaking of Tuberculosis” in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health.

Congratulations to Tripti who won best presentation prize for her MSc research thesis at Université Laval!

At the inaugural CORE seminar, Amrita showcased an ambitious initiative to engage pharmacists in India into pathways of tuberculosis diagnosis and management. The challenges of such a critical implementation science study cannot be underestimated and is testimony to the tenacity and initiative of CORE investigators like Dr Daftary and Dr M Pai. If you missed it, you can watch it on YouTube.

Read Madhu’s latest post inThe Conversation: “India’s ambitious new plan to conquer TB needs cash and commitment“.

Read Madhu’s latest opinion pieces on “Punching Below Its Weight: India’s Progress Towards Health-Related SDG Goals” published in The Wire, as well as “How can immigrant scientists give back to their homelands?” on Devex.

The Pai Global TB Group is featured on CIHR’s Celebrating Health Research storybook project, to celebrate Canada 150. Along with our team feature, discover how and why health researchers are changing lives, and hear firsthand from the patients whose lives have been affected by health research.

On September 14th, Madhu was elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in an event that took place in Ottawa. Fellows of the Academy are elected on the basis of their demonstrated leadership, creativity, distinctive competencies and commitment to advance academic health sciences. Congratulations!

Read Madhu’s latest blog published in Nature Microbiology “In Desperate Need” on what patients with drug resistant TB face, and how this could change (for the better).

Established in 2015 and co-sponsored by McGill Global Health Programs, there be will a total of ​6 travel awards of up to $1,500 each per year. These awards are specifically for trainees (students and postdoctoral fellows) in the fields of Tuberculosis and other mycobacterial research, and will be used for traveling (e.g. registration and travel expenses) to present their own research at national and international scientific meetings and/or conferences. The current competition is now open (apply here), and the deadline is October 4th.

Applications are invited from recent PhD or MD graduates for a one year, full-time fellowship in the Pai Global TB Research Group, starting in Fall 2017. Interested applicants should submit an application via email, consisting of a cover letter (including a statement of research interests and prior experience in diagnostics), Curriculum Vitae, contact information of 2 relevant referees, along with 3 sample diagnostics publications to madhukar.pai@mcgill.ca. To see the full description of the postdoctoral fellowship, click here.

We’re very pleased to welcome back Tripti in our group! She’ll be joining as a Project Manager September 5th. To find out more about her background, check out our team page.

Read the latest article “Monitoring and Improving Adherence to Tuberculosis Medications” from Amrita, published in the GP Clinics Supplement Let’s Talk TB.

Congratulations to Danielle and our team – past and present – on their new paper “Implementation of Xpert MTB/RIF in 22 high tuberculosis burden countries: are we making progress?” published in the European Respiratory Journal!

Read Madhu’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology “Tapping Bollywood to improve sanitation in India“.

Maddee’s Lancet Global Health paper “Use of the GeneXpert tuberculosis system for HIV viral load testing in India” has been covered by Science Speaks, a widely read global infectious diseases news website. Congratulations to Maddee and her co-authors!

Congratulations to Giorgia who won the McGill University Faculty of Medicine’s Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year!

Is writing a book in medicine worth the effort? Read Madhu’s latest blog on the matter: “Books and book chapters in medicine: is the juice worth the squeeze?” in Nature Microbiology.

Congratulations to Amrita and Madhu for being awarded a new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant to measure the quality of TB and TB-HIV care in the private sector in two provinces in South Africa using standardized (mystery) patients! This grant of $538,638 USD will run until January 2020.

Check out the Global Health Case Studies book in our resources, and thank you to Sophie and Vaidehi for their contribution to this compilation!

Read Anita and Madhu’s paper titled “Countries need to step up to end tuberculosis” published in Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

Under the leadership of Dr. Madhukar Pai, the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) has been awarded a 5-year grant to serve as a knowledge management partner to the Stop TB Partnership’s TB REACH initiative. The initiative, funded in part by Global Affairs Canada, provides one-year grants to partners throughout the world to increase the number of people diagnosed and treated for TB. Successful projects are considered for scale up by other donor agencies and/or national governments. The RI-MUHC’s role for Waves 5-9 is to provide technical assistance to TB REACH projects in two areas: operational research and knowledge dissemination.

In May 2017, members from Dr. Pai’s team travelled to Bangkok, Thailand for an initial gathering of TB REACH Wave 5 grantees from over 20 countries, and the Stop TB Partnership team. Dr. Pai’s team members held three grantee capacity building workshops, 1) Data Collection and Management, 2) Qualitative Research Methods, 3) Health Economics, and hosted an interactive lecture on knowledge dissemination for advocacy. They also held fruitful discussions with members of 23 grantee organizations that had requested technical assistance. Following this successful kick-off meeting, Dr. Pai’s team is enthusiastic to continue to collaborate with the innovative TB REACH projects for this year and the four waves ahead!

Read the latest paper from our Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation project Target product profiles for point-of-care TB testing titled “How patients navigate the diagnostic ecosystem in a fragmented health system: a qualitative study from India” in Global Health Action.

Congratulations to Emily and Sophie, who were both offered McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine studentship for 2017-2018!

Read Madhu’s latest paper on “Detecting New Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Infection: Time for a More Nuanced Interpretation of QuantiFERON Conversions” published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Read Maddee’s new publication in The Lancet Global Health “Use of the GeneXpert tuberculosis system for HIV viral load testing in India“, as well as Madhu’s three new papers “Implementation of the Xpert MTB/RIF assay for tuberculosis in Mongolia: a qualitative exploration of barriers and enablers” in PeerJ, “Computer-aided reading of tuberculosis chest radiography: moving the research agenda forward to inform policy” in The European Respiratory Journal, and “Diagnosing at Point of Care in South India” in Science & Technology Studies.

Read Amrita’s interview about the IC-IMPACTS project “Reducing time for TB diagnosis” in Education Times.

The G20 leaders’ declaration, published today, carries an important section on AMR, and tuberculosis is identified as a priority for R&D. Read more in Madhu’s post.

Read Madhu and Deepti’s latest HuffPost on “How Can We Eliminate TB If We Keep Settling For Less?“.

Read Madhu and Giorgia’s new paper on “Missing tuberculosis patients in the private sector: business as usual will not deliver results” in Public Health Action. Congratulations!

Check out this interesting piece by Madhu on Nandita and Deepti, the 2 TB survivors who attended the Summer Institute.

Read Madhukar Pai’s interview on TB in IndiaSpend to learn:

• Why he thinks TB has continued to be a major problem in India
• If India doing enough to tackle the TB menace
• What major steps India’s RNTCP has taken which will help reduce India’s TB burden
• If he thinks India will be able to eliminate the TB epidemic by 2025
• What the main challenges in diagnosing TB in India are
  
• and more!

Register for the second edition of the free online course “Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety” from Harvard University, featuring a lecture from Madhu, which starts June 27th 2017.

Samuel Schumacher (PhD graduate) and Andy McDowell (postdoctoral fellow), both alumni from the group, won prizes for best papers at this year’s McGill TB Centre Trainee Day. Samuel was awarded the Jonathan Meakins Prize for best paper in Clinical Research by a graduate student for “Diagnostic Test Accuracy in Childhood Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Bayesian Latent Class Analysis“. Andy was awarded the Jonathan Meakins Prize for best paper in Clinical Research by a postdoctoral fellow for “Treatment as diagnosis and diagnosis as treatment: empirical management of presumptive tuberculosis in India“. This is in addition to Sophie and Emily, who both won travel awards.

Read the new editorial from Madhu and Jennifer “Tuberculosis innovations mean little if they cannot save lives” published in eLife.

Congratulations to Emily and Sophie who both received a McGill TB Centre travel award!

Congratulations to Sophie and Anita, who have won FRSQ doctoral fellowships for 2017-2020!

Read Madhu and Jennifer’s latest post on “Bridging The Gap Between Tuberculosis Innovation And Access” at HuffingtonPost.

Congratulations to Sophie for winning the 1st prize for her poster at the 13th Annual Research Day of the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health department!

You can view Madhu’s lecture “Time for a quality revolution in tuberculosis care“, the 10th Annual George W. Comstock Lecture, on youTube.

Register for the free 8-week online course “Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety: Access to healthcare services is critical – but is it enough?” from Harvard University, featuring a lecture from Madhu, which starts June 27th 2017.

A new op-ed written by Madhu has been posted on The Quint: “10 Things to Prioritise to Achieve TB Elimination by 2025“.

The Quality of tuberculosis care in urban India grant, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been extended until the end of 2018, with additional funding, bringing the total investment to more than 2.3 million USD. Congratulations to Madhu and the QuTUB team!

The Pai TB Research Group has been very active for the 2017 World TB Day. Below are some of the expert interviews given by Madhukar Pai, along with media citations:

• http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/79-fewer-cases-by-2025-five-times-more-funding-what-the-draft-tb-control-plan-is-targeting/story-Nq4PztRXr4rhh1Xc391HlI.html
• https://www.newsdeeply.com/womenandgirls/women-survivors-tb-speak-stigma-india/
• http://www.healthissuesindia.com/exclusive-interview-dr-madhukar-pai-md-phd/
• http://www.diagnosticsworldnews.com/2017/3/23/consumption-junction-changing-tuberculosis-through-diagnostics.aspx
• https://www.id-hub.com/2017/03/20/diagnosis-a-weak-link-in-global-tuberculosis-control-an-interview-with-madhukar-pai/

Read the team’s new blog posts in Nature Microbiology by Emily (“A biomarkers database to accelerate point-of-care diagnostics for TB“) and Sophie (“Demanding more for TB“).

Here is a new post today by Amrita: https://www.newsdeeply.com/womenandgirls/time-address-devastating-impact-tb-indias-women/

You can read Anita and Madhu’s new blog posts, following the publication by the WHO of a list of antibiotic-resistant “priority pathogens”, and its omission of TB: “Regardless of the WHO snafu, tuberculosis should be a priority in the global AMR response” and “The TB community can’t catch a break“.

Ahead of World TB Day, here are 2 new papers from Madhu: “Reducing global tuberculosis deaths—time for India to step up” and “India’s plan to eliminate tuberculosis by 2025: converting rhetoric into reality“. You can also read his latest blog post: “Opinion: In India, eliminating tuberculosis isn’t just a health issue — it’s an economic one“.

The new PLoS TB Channel has been launched!

You can read Danielle’s latest blog post in Nature Microbiology: “Will you be an advocate on World TB day 2017?”.

Ahead of World TB Day, the second edition of the BCG World Atlas was launched. Find out more in Madhu’s blog post “Tracking TB Vaccination Policies and Practices Through Space and Time“, and visit the revamped website www.bcgatlas.org, and its feature on our resources page.

Madhu has a new paper out, with Robyn Lee, to be published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology: “Real-time sequencing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis“. Congratulations!

Check out Anita’s blog post in Nature Microbiology, published as World TB Day gets closer.

The team has 3 new papers in the recent “Special Issue: Commemorating World Tuberculosis Day 2017” of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

• Congratulations to Emily (and Madhu) for “A tuberculosis biomarker database: the key to novel TB diagnostics” in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases!
• Congratulations as well to Danielle, Amrita (and Srinath and Madhu) for “Quality of tuberculosis care in high burden countries: the urgent need to address gaps in the care cascade” published in the same journal!
• And finally, congratulations to Amrita for “Tuberculosis stigma as a social determinant of health: a systematic mapping review of research in low incidence countries” in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases!
  

Congratulations to Anita Svadzian and Giorgia Sulis who will start their PhD in Epidemiology at McGill University in the Fall of 2017, with Prof. Madhukar Pai as their supervisor. Anita completed her MPH at Boston University earlier this year, and is currently a Project Manager in the Pai TB Research Group for the UNOPS – Stop TB Partnership – TB REACH funded project “Knowledge Management Support for TB REACH 2016-2020/21”. Giorgia is currently finishing her fellowship in Infectious and Diseases at the University of Brescia, Italy.

The deadline to submit abstracts for the 2017 IDIGH Research Day has been extended to March 10th 2017.

To submit an abstract: https://goo.gl/forms/7X9illiJVYARQew13

To register for the event: https://goo.gl/forms/sDRYYrkfSayDdceH3

Congratulations to Toyin and Madhu for their recent comment published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine!

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The deadline to submit an application is May 2, 2017, at 4pm.

For graduate students: http://www.mcgill.ca/medresearch/students-postdocs/graduate/funding/studentships

For postdoctoral fellows: http://www.mcgill.ca/medresearch/students-postdocs/graduate/funding/postdoc