The role of novel molecular techniques for tuberculosis diagnostics in the WHO European Region.

Tuberculosis is one of the three leading infectious diseases, HIV and Malaria being the other two, accounting for more than 40% of all mortality making it to one of the world’s deadliest communicable diseases [1]. TB is also the major cause of death among people living with HIV [2-4]. The emergence of drug-resistant TB strains poses further formidable challenges for effective TB control, as it renders diagnosis, treatment and care more complex [5]. About 25% of the global burden of multidrug resistant (MDR)-TB occurs in the WHO European region and more than half of the world’s high MDR-burden countries are in the eastern part of this region [2-4].