Antara News·Indonesia·Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 07:38 AM UTC

Indonesia, Tanzania test nutrition approach to fight TB: Dy Minister

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Jakarta (ANTARA) - Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono said Indonesia and Tanzania were conducting a clinical trial, Prevention of Household Tuberculosis with Optimal Nutrition (PHOTON), to research tuberculosis (TB) treatment through a nutrition approach.

"PHOTON will test whether micronutrient and balanced protein supplementation can prevent and treat TB better. This is what we will answer together, with a study that will run for five years," Harbuwono said here on Thursday.

Harbuwono explained that every year in Indonesia, more than one million people fall ill with the disease, and some of them die due to delayed or suboptimal treatment.

"There are various obstacles, one of which is TB treatment and nutrition issues that will be highlighted in this PHOTON research," he added.

According to him, the research, supported by the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Novo Nordisk, has several important meanings, namely determining the direction of TB handling that is not only through medical treatment but also through proper nutrition.

"Second, the real form of Indonesia's contribution to the world always strengthens our clinical research, which this time we are doing at the University of Indonesia," Harbuwono said.

He explained that in 2025, 867,000 TB cases were found, or 80 percent of the estimate.

In 2026, TB detection efforts improved further as TB screening was integrated with the Free Health Check (CKG) program, along with household contact screening that reached 19.7 percent of the 80 percent target.

On the same occasion, PHOTON Principal Investigator Rina Agustina said that, given TB's close link with nutritional status and socio-economic conditions, nutrition interventions could become a complementary strategy to protect at-risk groups and support accelerating TB elimination.

"The Reducing Activation of Tuberculosis by Improvement of Nutritional Status (RATIONS) study in India published in The Lancet showed that nutritional support reduced the incidence of bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary TB by up to 48 percent among household contacts of TB patients," Agustina said.

She said the finding became the foundation for the PHOTON study, which aims to evaluate the efficacy of six months of nutritional supplementation in reducing bacteriologically confirmed TB incidence.

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