Bangladesh has one of the highest TB burdens in the world. With support from the Stop TB Partnership’s TB REACH initiative, icddr,b screened 655,751 people using digital X-ray and CAD4TB in the 4th most populous city in the world: Dhaka.

The artificial intelligence was thought to be very useful in high-population screening settings that have a limited number of radiologists. CAD4TB’s improved sensitivity uncover some of the TB ‘missing’ cases of TB in Dhaka.

This project helped and enable to find, diagnosed and put on treatment 6,192 people.

With the technical assistance from the Stop TB Partnership, the largest independent external evaluation of AI software was conducted using chest X-rays from the project and published on Lancet Digital Health. This provided much-needed evidence to support the World Health Organization’s policy update that in 2021 approved the use of AI for TB screening and triage for the first time.

Reference: StopTB Partnership IMPROVING CASE DETECTION BY PROVIDING ACCESS TO LOW-COST, HIGH-QUALITY DIAGNOSTICS_Bangladesh