Epicentre Scientific Day Paris 2023

Innovation in preventing, diagnosing and treating drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) cannot come fast enough—especially given the ground lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and with only 1 in 3 people who have DR-TB now receiving care. The content collection linked below offers a snapshot of recent TB work by MSF and collaborators to help change this picture. The TB-PRACTECAL and endTB studies have delivered clear evidence for shorter, safer, more effective treatments against drug-resistant (DR)-TB. Faced with the many hurdles that lie ahead before these and other critical interventions can be widely accessible, other studies investigate patient/family-based models of care adapted to complex settings and neglected groups, including children. Last, several authors explore limited but potentially important options for expanding diagnosis and preventive treatment.

Diabetes affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, a large majority of them living in low- and middle-income countries. Yet finding effective strategies, tools and policies for effectively managing this chronic illness—especially amid war, displacement or exclusion from care—is a neglected area of humanitarian medicine. Here we present a cross-section of work on this front by MSF and collaborators. Several studies assess the shift towards community-based, nurse-led models of care in rural settings. Others explore obstacles to diabetes care for war refugees living in camps in Jordan or Lebanon, highlighting how health programs can adapt to their needs. The demonstration that insulin retains potency for 30 days if cooled without refrigeration is opening doors to more patient self-management, as a case study in remote South Sudan shows. At the same time, MSF and others call for regulatory and financing policies that make diabetes medications and supplies cheaper, better adapted to humanitarian settings, and far more available to patients whose lives depend on them.