With no medicine on hand, a father and his infant who have just been diagnosed with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis go untreated, the delay prolonging their recoveries as well as the time they will remain infectious. The delay adds to the risk that they will get sicker and resistant to more drugs, increases the odds that those [...]
If you consider all the years that time stood still in the world of tuberculosis drug research, the most compelling aspect of the Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for TB Drug Trials just released by a Critical Paths to TB Drug Regimens working group is that occasions exist for them to be used. With nearly half [...]
Tuberculosis, Drug Resistance, and the History of Modern Medicine: From what may have been the first published randomized clinical drug trial, to neglect when deaths declined in the affluent countries where “headlines are written,” to the widening fault lines that divided those who had to worry about tuberculosis, and those who could ignore it, to [...]
Resistance to second-line drugs in people with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in eight countries: This Lancet article looking at rates of resistance to second line anti-tuberculosis drugs in Estonia, Latvia, Peru, Phillipines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand, put numbers on a situation already known: tuberculosis is growing harder to cure. Following a June New England [...]
In the giddy talk of a turning tide and the chance for an “AIDS-free generation,” a look at the recent history of responses to tuberculosis, the science surrounding that disease as it stands now, and what, after a period of premature complacency in the middle of the last century, yet is to be done to [...]
Dr. Mario Raviglione has been the director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department since 2003. He spoke with John Donnelly about his frustrations with detecting cases of multidrug-resistant TB as well as with delays in accomplishing widespread availablity of the GeneXpert machine, which can detect drug-resistant TB in two hours, compared to two [...]
CDC’s Grand Rounds feature examines past, future of HIV/TB response: In a world where an estimated 160 people die of tuberculosis every hour, where 25 percent of HIV/AIDS-related deaths are caused by TB, and where 9 million people can be expected to develop the disease each year, while untreatable forms of infection have emerged, “much [...]
Last week, the Global Center released a new issue brief on drug-resistant TB to mark World TB Day. Included in the brief was this interview with Dr. Sarita Shah, who recently presented new research showing that strains of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) in Tugela Ferry, South Africa, are becoming more resistant. Tugela Ferry is ground [...]
Tomorrow is World TB Day—and the halfway point for the Global Plan to Stop TB. What better time to learn about the latest TB research and the most innovative approaches to combating combat this ancient deadly epidemic? Those items will be on the agenda tomorrow, along with data about the virulent threat of drug-resistant TB, [...]
The Center for Strategic and International Studies yesterday unveiled a new “must-read” report for global health advocates, “Smart Global Health Policy.” While a panel at the Congressionally-chartered Institute of Medicine, made up primarily of scientists, issued recommendations on US global health policy last year, the CSIS panel is the first to involve high-level business leaders [...]
HIV
The second of two reports from the U.S. Government Accountability Office reviewing HIV treatment efforts suppported by the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief concludes that incomplete information on the results of those efforts will interfere with accurately evaluating partner countries’ abilities to sustain treatment programs. The GAO also has produced a report on PEPFAR [...]
Tuberculosis
Zambia: TB Control Pilot generates recommendations In 2010 a Human Rights Watch report charged the Zambian prison system with severe overcrowding, gross human rights violations and conditions that perpetuate infectious diseases, notably tuberculosis. The report led to a partnership between the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia with funding from the President’s Emergency Plan [...]
Research & Development
What would people living with HIV do differently if they knew that they could be infected again, with a new strain, that could complicate both their disease, and their treatment?
Policy
With a role in global health responses and research so extensive that a chart outlining its efforts looks a little like a maze, the United States Department of Defense has to ground itself in “institutional humility” to integrate the roles of fellow agencies and foreign partners in international disease-fighting efforts, as one speaker put it.