Global Lung Health / Tuberculosis

Patient Care

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital has a long history as a leader in tuberculosis (TB) care, dating back to the gold rush and the construction of the first San Francisco General Hospital as an infectious disease center in 1872. The legacy of this tradition of outstanding patient care continues today at the San Francisco Department of Public Health TB Control Program Clinic, located on Ward 94 at San Francisco General Hospital. There, physicians from the UCSF Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care and the Department of Public Health work together to care for patients with suspected and confirmed tuberculosis (see here for hours, location, and general clinic information).

UCSF is also home to the Curry International TB Center (CITC), which is designated as a Regional Tuberculosis Training and Medical Consultation Center through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Established in 1994 by UCSF alumni and Professor Emeritus Dr. Philip Hopewell, CITC develops educational curricula; trains doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and public health practitioners; and provides medical consultation, research, and technical assistance to help strengthen health-systems throughout the Western U.S. and internationally.

Research and Policy-making

According to the World Health Organization, Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent (surpassing HIV/AIDS), killing over 1.5 million people in 2018. Faculty in the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital have been working to improve global lung health for decades through research, technical assistance and global leadership to leverage the expertise developed through UCSF and ZSFG.  Faculty have advised the U.S. Government, the World Health Organization, the American Thoracic Society, and other international health organizations on how best to design treatment regimens, translate research into patient care and advance public health practices based on the latest scientific evidence.

As pulmonologists, we want to help reduce deaths and complications due to TB, pneumonia, HIV-related lung diseases, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Together these lung diseases explain about one-fifth of the global burden of disease in low and middle-income countries, and cause almost 10 million deaths per year. As critical care physicians, we want to help clinicians practicing in areas with financial and other resource constraints to more accurately identify and care for severely ill patients. In whatever we do, domestically or internationally, we try to use the state-of-the-art approaches that draw on the expertise of different team members from the U.S. and abroad in order to find simple, long-lasting, and patient-oriented solutions.

For more information, please visit https://tb.ucsf.edu/.