Tuberculosis is still the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Despite being an adequately diagnosable, preventable and treatable disease, tuberculosis continues to plague many parts of the world, including developed countries. In Quebec, it disproportionately affects First Nations people, particularly those in the Far North, and people from countries with high incidence rates. Once infected and contagious, individuals can spread the disease to others.
One of the CHUM’s laboratories is home to a crack team of researchers bent on revolutionizing how tuberculosis outbreaks are detected and handled within the province. The team is currently working with public health authorities to deploy the latest tools in outbreak prevention and surveillance. Their goal is to leverage both your support and bacterial genomics—considered to be something of a genetic instruction manual for bacteria—to protect the population.
“Rapid surveillance of emerging COVID-19 variants played a key role in managing the pandemic. Your donations to our research program allowed us to develop and validate tools that are expected to have a similar outstanding impact. These tools will be able to quickly identify tuberculosis transmission chains, halt their progression, pinpoint close contacts related to an outbreak, predict treatment effectiveness, and much more. Our goal is nothing short of putting a nail in the coffin of tuberculosis. ”
— Dr. Simon Grandjean Lapierre, medical microbiologist, laboratory medicine department at the CHUM