In the midst of stalled funding and politicized policies, we’re reading about answers to infectious diseases that remain just out of reach . . . Inspired by India, Singaporeans seek to end gay sex ban – Anti-gay laws imposed across the British Empire remain one of the key barriers to controlling HIV as a global […]
A study following outcomes of 28 patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis in three countries with high burdens of the disease found what the researchers cite as strong evidence that a combination of the two newest TB drugs could be part of a safe and effective treatment regimen. The drugs, bedaquiline — which was approved by the […]
As the United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS gets underway today in New York, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting with Congress this week. Tuberculosis advocates are hoping to see Prime Minister Modi and members of Congress renew their commitment to eliminating TB in India, which has one of the highest TB burdens […]
“It never occurred to me I was going to survive . . .” In a video that is part of a West African multimedia campaign highlighting Ebola survivor’s stories to disseminate information about the virus and its continuing spread, a Guinean woman tells of how six members of her family became sick, how three survived, […]
PHILADELPHIA, PA- Without new tools, soon, to address multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, TB control efforts made over the last two decades will be defeated, Dr. Carol Dukes Hamilton said this week, in an IDWeek presentation. Hamilton, co-chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America Center for Global Health Policy called drug-resistant TB a runaway train. New tools are […]
Science Speaks is live-blogging from AIDS 2014 in Melbourne, Australia through the coming week, with updates on research, policy and insights from the 20th International AIDS Conference. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – “We must ensure that the worlds of HIV and TB focus on individual human beings instead of individual diseases” This message headlined remarks from Mark […]
But doesn’t explain how . . . When USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah went to Congress to discuss the Obama administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2015, he began with remarks in which he made no mention of tuberculosis and aside from a mention of “creating an AIDS-free generation,” made no mention of the global […]
WHO cites need to prevent new drug resistance, protect first treatment advance in more than 40 years The World Health Organization’s release this week of interim policy guidelines on the use of bedaquiline for treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis offers hope to patients and their physicians running out of options to treat the disease, but the […]
In the week leading up to International Tuberculosis Day, which commemorates the discovery by Robert Koch of the cause of the disease in 1882, Science Speaks will look at issues, events and efforts to confront this lasting and global health threat. When South African nurse Pat Bond got sick in 2010, doctors treated her for […]
This is how small the world of infectious diseases can be, and how recent the distant past. The patient who ended up at Baltimore’s Health Department in April 2011 had been treated with apparent success for tuberculosis before, in Kenya, where he was from. But now, he had a strain of the disease that was […]
HIV
Sub-Saharan African countries where adolescents 15 or younger could be tested for HIV without sign-off by parents or guardians show 11 percent higher rates of testing […]
Tuberculosis
With the release of a “pre-final text” of updated guidelines for treatment of multidrug- and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis, the World Health Organization made official substantial changes to […]
Research & Development
A trial to test the safety of, and immune response prompted by, the latest candidate for a vaccine to protect against Zika virus infection has begun […]
Policy
A year that started with a shutdown of the U.S. government is ending the same way, demonstrating ongoing instability in American policy, funding and global health […]