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Tuberculosis (TB) is still amongst the most important causes of human morbidity and mortality, killing approximately two million people each year. Standard short-course chemotherapy (SSCC) can rapidly control illness and dramatically reduce the chance of death, but the impact of treatment has rarely been evaluated in these terms.

Am I correct to assume that it refers to the usage of short-course chemotherapy?

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    It's a very peculiar thing to be saying. Perhaps the fact that the writer casually increases the real TB mortality rateTB (1.5M, and falling by about 2% a year) to "approximately 2M" is evidence that he's not very clear-thinking. Why on earth would SSCC treatment not be evaluated in terms of its ability to control illness and reduce the chance of death? What other criteria would we be likely to use to evaluate "standard" treatment?
    – FumbleFingers
    Dec 23, 2021 at 16:48
  • @FumbleFingers other criteria might include side-effects, patient adherence, health service costs, societal costs, ...
    – mdewey
    Dec 23, 2021 at 17:07
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    @mdewey: Doubtless. But if it's the "standard" treatment, surely the first criterion by which you'd evaluate it is its efficacy.
    – FumbleFingers
    Dec 23, 2021 at 17:14
  • As @FumbleFingers explains, this makes no sense at all. Can you provide a link to your source, so we can try to work out what snake oil is being peddled here?
    – TonyK
    Dec 23, 2021 at 18:13
  • I think it's from pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10869331 I think the full article is available on line.
    – user20637
    Dec 23, 2021 at 20:05

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The passage is saying that SSCC can control illness and reduce the chance of death, but has not very often been evaluated in those "terms".

Put another way, the treatment is rarely evaluated in its effectiveness in controlling illness and reducing the chance of death.

So, the "terms" are the treatment's ability to control illness and reduce the chance of death.

Standard short-course chemotherapy (SSCC) can rapidly control illness and dramatically reduce the chance of death, but the impact of treatment has rarely been evaluated in these terms.

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The expression 'in terms [of]' means 'in relation to'.

The impact of SSCS treatment has rarely been evaluated in relation to controlling illness and reducing the chance of death.

I am well in terms of health, less so in relation to money.

In terms of something (Cambridge Dictionary)

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I found the article at https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/29/3/558/2951374

The writer's intended meaning is perhaps explained by the next paragraph which says "We developed a mathematical model that makes use of routinely-collected data to calculate the number of deaths directly prevented by TB treatment". So the claim, I think, is that previous research has rarely evaluated this treatment in terms of the number of deaths prevented.

(Which seems a surprising claim, but I know nothing about the subject.)

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