Report on the joint tuberculosis and HIV pilot survey in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 2019

South Africa has a high infectious disease burden with overlapping Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics. People living with HIV are vulnerable to drug-resistant TB, and HIV is associated with multi- and extremely-drug resistant TB epidemics and outbreaks. South Africa has conducted population-based national HIV prevalence, behaviour and communication surveys since 2002. These studies, which include dry bloodspot samples, have more recently included analyses of HIV incidence, antiretroviral drug uptake, recency of HIV infection, and viral load suppression. The National Department of Health (NDoH) conducted its first TB prevalence survey in 2017 and that survey included symptom screening, sputum samples and mobile chest x-rays.