MSF Scientific Days International 2024

On 16 May people from within and outside MSF will gather in London, joined by online participants from over 100 countries, for this annual ‘conference without borders’ showcasing medical research from fragile and conflict affected settings.

All too often the populations MSF and others work with are excluded from the benefits of research. Yet they are the ones that often need these benefits most. So speakers will consider how MSF’s research has impacted the way our projects deliver care, how knowledge gaps can be pivotal to political gatekeeping and to triggering appropriate humanitarian responses, and how identifying best practices and funding innovation are key to improving our capacity to act.

Here you can view abstracts for all scientific presentations, which focus on infectious diseases, outbreaks, vaccination, and mortality.

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Conference Material

Video

Dorion C

2024-05-25 • MSF Scientific Day International 2024

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Noma

Noma, also known as cancrum oris, is a rapidly progressing life-threatening infection that affects the mouth and face. Noma is preventable and easy to treat if addressed in the early reversible stages, but most often deadly if untreated. The disease most commonly affects children who are chronically malnourished or whose immune systems are otherwise compromised. Noma affects an estimated 140,000 children annually. Noma was added to the WHO's list of Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2023.

MSF is working to discover more about noma. This collection highlights MSF's mixed methods research on treatment outcomes, burden of disease, attitudes towards the disease and other aspects of noma.

For more information on MSF's work on noma, you can also visit https://noma.msf.org/.

World TB Day 2022—Progress on tools and care models amid glob...

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TB-PRACTECAL Trial—Evidence for a shorter, safer, more effect...

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) remains an especially deadly form of the ancient scourge of TB, while current treatments are long, toxic, and ineffective for half of all patients. Aiming to change this unacceptable status quo, in the mid-2010’s MSF and partners launched three clinical trials to test novel regimens containing the first new TB drugs in decades. On 22 December 2022 the New England Journal of Medicine published findings from TB-PRACTECAL, a three-country randomized controlled trial, showing that a shorter regimen is safer and cured 89% of DR-TB patients, compared with 52% on the standard of care. These findings have already been incorporated into the World Health Organization’s new TB treatment guidelines. A separate study shows that the new regimen is also more cost-effective. Alongside these results the content collection linked below highlights other aspects of the trial, from community engagement strategies that helped shape TB-PRACTECAL to setbacks arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. It also examines urgent challenges in scaling up access to these life-saving drugs, including affordability and patent barriers.

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