The impact of Wave 3 projects on TB treatment has been significant. Childhood TB treatment increased +49% in projects with dedicated pediatric strategies. TB treatment increased +28% for other Wave 3 projects – in line with prior Waves of funding. All Wave 3 projects together notified 13.205 additional TB patients to their countries’ National TB Programmes (NTPs) (These numbers are adjusted by historical trend).
Among the 35 Wave 3 Year 1 projects, 30 (85%) were able to report new bacteriologically-positive TB treatment by gender. These 30 projects treated 67,705 women and 99,296 males (male to female ratio [MFR]: 1.47). In Wave 3, a large number of projects also scaled up Xpert MTB/RIF technology and overall resulted in the finding that the passive use of Xpert MTB/RIF technology is unlikely to increase the number of people treated for TB. In fact, in instances the passive use of Xpert MTB/RIF may actually result in reductions in treatment as medical practitioners use it to rule out empiric diagnosis and people with drug-resistant TB who would have been previously treated with incorrect medication are consequently moved to a different reporting system which is not evaluated.