Bioengineer.org | TB and Diabetes Care Remain Fragmented in the World’s Highest-Burden Countries

13 October 2026

Bioengineer.org news story

TB has never been a disease that exists in isolation, and nowhere is that clearer than in the world’s three highest-burden countries. China, India, and Indonesia together carry a staggering share of global TB cases, and all three are simultaneously witnessing a relentless rise in type 2 diabetes. The collision of these two epidemics is not a hypothetical concern: diabetes roughly triples a person’s risk of developing active TB, weakens the immune response to infection, and undermines the effectiveness of TB treatment. Yet a new systematic review published in BMC Health Services Research reveals that, despite more than fifteen years of warnings from the World Health Organization, health systems in these three nations have largely failed to weave their TB and diabetes services into anything resembling a coordinated whole.

The review set out to answer a deceptively simple question: how integrated are TB and diabetes services in the countries where both diseases rage hardest? The search yielded 51 publications, which together described 55 distinct TB-diabetes service implementations.

Read the full news story here.

Source: Bioengineer.org