Malawians will have an opportunity to get tested and treated for Tuberculosis (TB) on the same day if a prospects study which is currently underway proves to be a viable means of diagnosing the disease.

The study is being done by the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW) in the Township of Bangwe in Blantyre.

Speaking to YFM, Dr Peter MacPherson who is heading the TB and Public Health research group said the new way of detecting TB will be computerized, fast and cheap.

“We have previously found is that the TB tests that we have do not always detect TB and on average it takes 21 days before someone gets diagnosed with TB.”

“As a country we can do better using new technologies such a digital chest Xray to shorten the time of TB diagnosis,” said MacPherson.

The study is expected to run for six months.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in Malawi.

Provisional results from the national TB prevalence survey completed in 2014 showed a higher TB prevalence of 1014/100,000 compared to the previous estimated prevalence of 373/100,000 by the World Health Organization (WHO).