Tuberculosis
(asked on 7th May 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support public health action to tackle tuberculosis.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and NHS England’s joint tuberculosis (TB) action plan for England details actions to achieve a 90% reduction in people with TB by 2035 and is aligned with the World Health Organization’s elimination targets. The plan is available at the following link:
The United Kingdom’s pre-entry TB screening programme operates in 102 countries to reduce the importation of TB by screening applicants for long term visas from high TB incidence countries. People are screened in line with the UK Tuberculosis Technical Instructions, which are available at the following link:
Active TB disease can be prevented by identifying, testing, and treating people with TB infection. People who are close contacts of individuals with infectious TB are also tested for infection, so they can be treated before the disease develops.
NHS England’s national latent TB testing programme for migrants from high incidence countries operates in 27 of the 42 integrated care board areas in England.
In March 2025, NHS England and The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital published a Getting it Right First Time review of TB services, which included a series of recommendations to reduce unwarranted variation in clinical practice and improve care, especially to underserved populations. The report is available at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/girft-review-of-tuberculosis-national-report.pdf
The UKHSA, in collaboration with key stakeholders, is leading work to develop a new national action plan for 2026 to 2031, which includes a call for evidence.