• Researchers struggle to understand how teenagers experience tuberculosis (TB) treatment, and they haven’t done enough to ask, experts at last week’s 7th South African TB Conference, argued. 

• It’s a blind spot that leaves adolescents in the lurch at a time when changes in their immune systems and social lives also make this group more likely to become sick with TB. 

• TB, which is both preventable and treatable, was the leading cause of death for teens (ages 10 to 19) in South Africa between 2008 and 2018.

Fourteen months, seven facilities (in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal), two types of treatment (hundreds of pills), six months in hospital and two missed years of school. 

Drugmaker Otsuka Pharmaceutical won’t charge South Africa for using its new tuberculosis (TB) drug in a pilot programme, but South Africa’s free deal is unlikely to last.