30 June 2009 - Bethesda, Maryland, USA -- The benefits of fully implementing the Global Plan to Stop TB in sub-Saharan Africa would outweigh the costs nine to one, according to an analysis published today on Health Affairs. The study, authored by Ramanan Laxminarayan and coauthors, is a follow-up to a World Bank research report, Economic Benefit of Tuberculosis Control [.pdf], completed on behalf of the Stop TB Partnership in 2007. That study found that 22 countries with the world’s highest numbers of TB cases could earn significantly more than they spend on TB diagnosis and treatment if they signed onto the Global Plan.
The researchers' results are based an epidemiological and economic model that projects TB incidence and mortality under various approaches and calculates the economic costs of additional treatment and monitoring versus the economic benefit of averting TB-related deaths.