Tuberculosis: Local, National and Global Perspectives… in the age of Ebola and Zika!
Presented by Eric Brenner, MD (*)
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics -- USC Arnold School of Public Health
Special Public World TB Day Lecture
Monday March 26, 2018 at 12:00
USC’s Darla Moore School of Business (Greene & Assembly) -- Room 123

World TB Day is celebrated every March 24 in honor of Robert Koch who, on that date in 1882, announced that he had demonstrated that Mycobacterium tuberculosis is in fact the “causative agent” of TB. To mark the occasion, the CDC will release on March 23 a special issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which will feature articles devoted to tuberculosis. According to WHO, tuberculosis is the world’s leading infectious cause of death. Thus, in 2016 there were an estimated 10.4 million TB cases in the world and 1.3 million deaths! (These numbers may be compared, for example, to the 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths from Ebola which occurred in the vastly more publicized 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak). This lecture will focus on Tuberculosis from complementary perspectives including:

• Microbiological and Clinical Aspects
• How TB is really (!) managed and controlled in SC and in the USA… and the key role(s) of nurses!
• Natural History
• Challenge of emerging increased US focus on Latent TB Infection (LTBI)
• Epidemiology • Global TB Control strategies – classic and evolving (+ a bit of politics)
• US Population Modeling
• TB Big-picture issues as a vehicle for students and young professionals considering career options
• Health and Human Rights

Note: A somewhat more technical follow-up epi/biostat lecture-seminar relating totuberculosis will be given on Wednesday March 28 at noon in Room 104 of the Arnold School's Discovery Building. Focus will be on: (i) Epi-attempts to estimate the incidence of tuberculosis based on population-based tuberculin reactor prevalence surveys to calculate the “Annual Risk of Infection” (ARI); and (ii) nuances between the concepts of “True Prevalence” and “Apparent Prevalence” which are neglected in most human epidemiology textbooks (!?) but which are, however, commonly discussed in veterinary epidemiology!

(*) Dr. Brenner has worked with TB programs at the State level with SC DHEC, at the national level with the
US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and at the Global level with the World Health Organization (WHO).