Geneva/New Delhi: The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) has announced that a new US$14.5 million grant has been signed with Unitaid to evaluate the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) for diagnosis of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The grant agreement was signed by FIND CEO Catharina Boehme and Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora, at the Global Health Campus in Geneva, Switzerland.
The project – dubbed Seq&Treat (bringing next-generation TB care to underserved communities) – will start in October 2019. With implementation across Brazil, China, Georgia, India and South Africa over a period of 3 years, it will enable the introduction and global adoption of commercial, targeted NGS solutions for affordable, scalable and rapid TB drug susceptibility testing (DST).
