- Nigerian Ministry of Health publishes guidelines highlighting QIAGEN's gold standard blood test for latent TB as part of their "test and treat" strategy to fight the disease
- Largest economy in Africa is the first country to recommend only QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus as standard IGRA
- High-risk population will now be screened for latent tuberculosis
QIAGEN (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced that Nigeria, the country with the largest population in Africa and one of the world's 30 high-disease burden countries for tuberculosis (TB), has published guidelines recommending QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus) in screening for latent TB infection (LTBI) as part of Nigeria's strategy to prevent the spread of tuberculosis. QIAGEN has partnered with Nigeria's National Tuberculosis Leprosy Control Program (NTBLCP) to adapt World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and provide guidance to healthcare professionals on dealing with latent TB. Nigeria is the first high-burden country to exclusively embrace modern blood tests, called interferon gamma release assays (IGRAs), for latent TB screening of at-risk individuals in tuberculosis control programs.
"Nigeria is first in Africa to adopt the Global End TB strategy by incorporating TB prevention in their national TB guidelines. As a more comprehensive disease control approach, their new guidelines will take aim at the large silent reservoir of latent TB infection by testing and targeting those who are more likely to become tomorrow's cases." said Dr. Masae Kawamura, Senior Director, TB Medical and Scientific Affairs, at QIAGEN. "To finally provide both TB treatment and prevention for Nigerians is a major step forward towards global health equity and accelerating TB decline in Nigeria. We wholeheartedly congratulate Dr. Lawanson and Nigeria's Ministry of Health."
"We are proud to publish these new guidelines for LTBI screening for Nigeria, based on the WHO recommendation of 2018, as this is a crucial step to accelerate our efforts to fight latent and active tuberculosis in our country," comments Dr. Adebola Lawanson, National Coordinator of the TB Programme, Federal Ministry Of Health of Nigeria. "The creation of these guidelines, and the input from QIAGEN, was a great opportunity to innovate our approach to testing and treatment of TB with the inclusion of IGRA testing. With these guidelines our healthcare professionals now have a holistic protocol on managing at risk individuals with latent TB to avoid progression to active TB, followed by antibiotic treatment of infected individuals."
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