Tuberculosis control: the need for new tools

Africa Prize Lecture 2022 given by Professor Novel Njweipi Chegou.
According to the American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, tuberculosis has been affecting humanity for over 9000 years. The bacterium that causes the disease might have been in existence for over 3 million years. Although curable, this disease that has over the years been referred to as “the white plaque”, “consumption”, “the captain of all these men of death” amongst others, currently still ranks as a top single infectious killer, killing more people than HIV/AIDs. Over 10 million people fell ill with tuberculosis in 2021 and about 1.6 million died, majority of whom were in low- and middle-income countries. In this talk, Professor Chegou will discuss the challenges that are involved in the control of tuberculosis, the need for new tools that may assist in the control of the disease, and the contribution that laboratories such as his, that are situated in high burden African countries, are making in the fight against the disease.