Coordinator
Dr. Nicolas Durier, TREAT Asia Program, amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research), Thailand
Project 2011
Establishment of 2 pilot training centers for non-commercial methods of culture and DST in India and Uganda
In 2010, the World Health Organization issued a time-limited recommendation for the use of selected non-commercial mycobacterium culture and drug-susceptibility testing (DST) for rapid screening of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), as an interim solution and under specific conditions in reference laboratories: the Microscopic Observation Drug Susceptibility Assay (MODS), the Nitrate Reductase Assay (NRA), and the Colorimetric Redox Indicator method (CRI).
The NDWG Subgroup on Drug Susceptibility Testing established two pilot training centers for these methods as an alternative for simple, rapid and inexpensive detection of MDR-TB in resource-constrained settings. In order to increase the geographical reach of this service, one training center has been established in Asia, with All India Institute of Medical Sciences, in New Delhi, India, and the other one in Africa, with Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
The two institutions have now completed the training curriculum and organization and are ready to launch the program. The trainings are described in details in the documents below.
Project 2009-2010
Coordinators: Dr. David Moore, Imperial College London, UK and Universidad Cayetano Heredia, Peru Personal page
Dr. Nicolas Durier, TREAT Asia Program, Foundation for AIDS Research, Thailand
Collection of Studies on TB Culture and DST Methods
A collection of over 280 articles compiled by the Culture-based Diagnostics Subgroup of the NDWG and an inventory of MTB culture and phenotypic drug susceptibility testing methods, including solid media culture, and automated and manual liquid culture.
Article list and documents for download are available from the tbevidence.org website.