Assessing usability of QIAreach QuantiFERON-TB platform in a high tuberculosis prevalence, low-resource setting

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.8 billion people, close to a quarter of the world's population are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis [1]. Despite substantial declines in tuberculosis (TB) incidence over the past decade, Zambia still has the seventh highest TB incidence in sub-Saharan Africa and remains one of the 30 WHO high TB-burden priority countries [2]. In 2019, there were ∼59 000 new individuals with active TB disease in Zambia (incidence rate of 333 per 100 000 per year), which resulted in 15 400 TB-related deaths, of which 62% were among people living with HIV [2]. QIAreach QuantiFERON-TB is a portable IGRA with the potential to improve accessibility of TB infection diagnosis in low-resource settings <https://bit.ly/3nTzolf> Authors would like to express their sincere appreciation and gratitude to all members of the TREATS infection cohort study team in Zambia, and to the study participants and their communities, and to the Zambart and non-Zambart laboratory staff, for their contributions to the research. The content herein is solely the responsibility of the authors.