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Tuberculosis Research
We know what it will take to eliminate TB. We know we need new and effective vaccines, including simpler and shorter TB treatments, ones that work against drug resistant TB and we know better diagnostic tests are needed. All our TB programs are focused on advancing these goals and we are making progress.
At KEMRI/CDC we are working in the hope of seeing a future without needless deaths from TB.
In 1979 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) established a partnership called the KEMRI/CDC Research and Public Health Collaboration to focus on malaria research. The collaboration has expanded its mission and staffing to become a comprehensive research platform with projects and studies located throughout Kenya. KEMRI/CDC’s work now includes research on HIV, TB, emerging infections, 
neglected tropical diseases and other public health issues.
The collaboration includes support for HIV prevention and care programs and a state-of-the-art health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) and other population-based platforms to assess disease burden, disease outbreaks and health intervention impact in communities.
The KEMRI/CDC TB branch tackles tough TB problems by directly working with vulnerable families and communities.
Our professional relationships, high quality services, and expert staff form a foundation for innovation and collaboration serving to measure the TB burden in Kenya and helping to foster new and creative ways of combating the disease.
Highlights
• Recent TB survey in Asembo and Gem successfully uncovered a high burden of undiagnosed TB suggesting efforts to find more of these cases is needed
• Creating lab and management expertise to conduct large clinical trials
• An on-going community partnership project to reduce the burden of TB in the community is showing success
• Became member of the tuberculosis clinical trials consortium, an international association working to find better TB treatment
What we’re doing
Developing New Tools for Control
Evaluating the safety and effecacy of a new TB vaccine and a new TB drug to see if they work better than current tools, and we are evaluating new TB diagnostic tests to see how well they work.
Building Collaborations
Working in partnerships with local, national, and international colleagues builds on our collective knowledge of TB. These alliances can speed up
the learning curve to find the answers needed to eliminate TB.
KEMRI/CDC collaborates with the Ministry of Health, for example, to strengthen their TB control program by helping them answer important research questions and helping to make sure answers are translated into policy and practice. The TB branch also collaborates with other KEMRI/CDC branches helping to answer the TB component to other diseases like HIV or schistosomiasis.
Laboratory Services
The KEMRI/CDC TB laboratory is now a biosafety level 3 (BSL 3) laboratory, making it capable of doing sophisticated TB testing, like testing for drug resistance. As of January 2012, it started supporting the Ministry of Health by doing tests for drug resistant TB for all patients who need this test in Nyanza province. This will help these patients get the diagnostic testing results they need more quickly.