Realizing the “40 by 2022” Commitment From the United Nations High-Level Meeting on the Fight to End Tuberculosis: What Will It Take to Meet Rapid Diagnostic Testing Needs?

The potential gains from full adoption of World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended rapid diagnostics (WRDs) for tuberculosis (TB) are significant, but there is no current analysis of the additional investment needed to reach this goal. We sought to estimate the necessary investment in instruments, tests, and money, using Xpert MTB/RIF (Xpert), which detects Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and tests for resistance to rifampicin (RIF), as an example. An existing calculator for TB diagnostic needs was adapted to estimate the Xpert needs for a group of 24 countries with high TB burdens. This analysis assumed that countries will achieve the case-finding commitments agreed to at the recent United Nations High-Level Meeting on the Fight to End Tuberculosis, and that countries would adopt the WHO-recommended algorithm in which all people with signs and symptoms of TB receive an Xpert test. When compared to the current investments in these countries, this baseline model revealed that countries would require a 4-fold increase in the number of Xpert modules and a 6-fold increase in the number of Xpert test cartridges per year to meet their full testing needs. The incremental cost of the additional instruments for these countries would total approximately US$474 million, plus an incremental cost each year of cartridges of approximately $586 million, or a 5-fold increase over current investments. A sensitivity analysis revealed a variety of possible changes under alternative scenarios, but most of these changes either do not meet the global goals, are unrealistic, or would result in even greater investment needs. These findings suggest that a major investment is needed in WRD capacity to implement the recommended diagnostic algorithm for TB and reach the case-finding commitments by 2022.