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XDR-TB, the widely untreatable, mutated manifestation of TB, is spreading; that much is known. Unknown is how much is out there, and how fast it is growing. Between 1996 and 2006, TB cases rose nearly 30%. One-fifth of new cases are resistant to at least one of the drugs available, as my colleague, Rachel Nugent, points out in the most recent issue of Foreign Policy. The StopTB Partnership reports that in some places, as many as 19% of cases are resistant to multiple first-line and second-line drugs. In light of these statistics, the knowledge and awareness of this emerging global health threat is woefully insufficient. In 2007, world-renowned photojournalist James Nachtwey decided to do something about it. Natchwey was one of three in the world to be awarded the TED Prize,...

What do you get when you cross cartoonists with public health experts? You get a bunch of baccili-busters! The WHO-hosted Stop TB Partnership released a comic book on July 24 aimed at teaching children and teens about tuberculosis and how to prevent it. The Stop Tuberculosis Team is captained by the Portuguese soccer star, Luis Figo, who in the comic book leads his team to victory against a team of tuberculosis germs. In a statement issued on the occasion of the comic book launch, Figo urges young people to take the comic book's message seriously: Tuberculosis is a killer, and I want all of you to stay safe from it. I am passing the ball to you -- you can help reach the goal of stopping tuberculosis. The comic book is the result of a global competition in January 2008 to reward the...

from the New York Times Oh wow... how did I miss this one. Thanks to Blog The Debt for calling this to my attentionBy NICHOLAS BAKALARThe rapid rise in tuberculosis cases in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is strongly associated with the receipt of loans from the International Monetary Fund, a new study has found.Critics of the fund have suggested that its financial requirements lead governments to reduce spending on health care to qualify for loans. This, the authors say, helps explain the connection.The fund strongly disputes the finding, saying the former communist countries would be much worse off without the loans.“Tuberculosis is a disease that takes time to develop,” said William Murray, a spokesman for the fund, “so presumably the increase in mortality rates must...

from All Africa BuaNews (Tshwane)NEWS2 July 2008Posted to the web 2 July 2008By Gabi KhumaloDurbanPoverty is among the main reasons for the high treatment defaulter rate among Tuberculosis (TB) patients.Speaking to BuaNews during the South African TB Conference, currently underway in Durban, TB Free Advocacy Communication and Social Mobilisation Manager, Leko Nkabinde said due to poverty, most people were surviving on social grants they received for their illnesses.They however deliberately neglected to take their TB treatment as required so that they could continue to receive the grant."Poverty levels are so high and some people do not want to be cured in order to continue receiving the grant."You find a person continuing to drink alcohol knowing that you can't consume it whilst on...

from MedilexiconThere is a new tool in the arsenal to fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB): a rapid diagnostic test that can function in high-burden settings such as public health clinics. MDR-TB is increasingly on the rise, and spreads most rapidly through vulnerable communities that are already riven by HIV and poverty. One of the biggest barriers to appropriate treatment is the lengthy diagnostic process of conventional techniques that is not well-suited to public health settings serving vulnerable populations."With continued delay of testing results, and thus, treatment, the patient will likely transmit the infection to those persons they come in close contact with," said Richard O'Brien, M.D., senior investigator from the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, a...

from The Daily StarDr Riffat Hossain LucyTuberculosis (TB) has been a major public health problem for centuries. It is a leading infectious disease that represents more than a quarter of the world’s preventable deaths. Increase in the incidence of TB in the developing countries and its re-emergence in the developed world led the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare TB as a global emergency in 1993.Despite the availability of affordable, effective treatment, the annual total of 8.8 million new cases and an estimated 1.6 million of deaths from TB (WHO Report 2007) represents an intolerable burden of human suffering.TB can be completely cured through the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS). DOTS is currently practiced as the most effective way of controlling the disease....

from the Daily Nation Story by MIKE MWANIKIPoverty and poor nutrition are major factors fuelling the spread of tuberculosis in the country, health experts say.Kenyatta National Hospital chief executive Jotham Micheni Tuesday said slum dwellers in Nairobi and other urban areas faced the highest risk and contribute 80 per cent of the total TB burden in the country.Last year, 116,723 cases of TB were detected in Kenya compared to 115,234 in 2006, which was a seven per cent increase.In 2004, Kenya was ranked 10th among 22 countries which account for about 80 per cent of the world’s TB cases.Globally, the highly-infectious but curable disease kills about two million people each year and is spread through coughing and sneezing. According to experts, TB symptoms include a persistent cough that...

from Maghreb Arabe PresseCasablanca, Some 25,500 new tuberculosis (TB) cases were documented in Morocco in 2007, health ministry officials said on Monday.Speaking at a meeting organized by Health Ministry, on the occasion of world TB day - celebrated each March 24- the participants noted that the incidence of the disease has increased to 82 cases per 100,000 inhabitants at the national level, while its annual regression remains low (2 to 3%). They added that 70% of cases, including 57% of men, were diagnosed in the most urbanized and populated areas, notably around major cities, pointing out that 55% of the cases are of pulmonary TB while the rest are of extra-pulmonary TB. The meeting was an opportunity to present the 2006-2015 TB national strategic plan. It aims at speeding...

from Africa Science News Written by Masimba Biriwasha Robert Koch, a German physician and scientist, discovered Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). Since then, the world has been marking the day as the World's TB Day and a century later today, TB is still posing a challenge, thanks to the “unholy marriage” with the HIV and AIDSAnnouncing the discovery, Koch said: "If the importance of a disease for mankind is measured by the number of fatalities it causes, then tuberculosis must be considered much more important than those most feared infectious diseases, plague, cholera and the like." Today, more than a century later, true to Koch's words, TB is rearing its old, antiquated head at humanity, causing serious fatalities particularly among poor and...

Today is World TB Day. It would be nice to be celebrating it as the day that TB was wiped out. Instead, this day commemorates the discovery of the TB bacillus 126 years ago. Yes, that's right: 126 years. It's pretty clear that TB bacillus is a wily foe. We've made some progress since Dr. Robert Koch's "eureka!" moment, but not nearly enough. A big reason for the stalled progress in fighting TB is growing resistance to the drugs used to treat it.The recommended treatment for TB, known as DOTS, is designed precisely with the avoidance of drug resistance in mind. Yet TB cases are up globally and so are drug resistant cases of TB, known as MDR-TB and XDR-TB. In its Global Tuberculosis Control 2008report last week, the World Health Organization provides the good news and the bad news about the...

from the UN News CentreA new publication by the United Nations health agency finds that the pace of global efforts to control the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic slowed slightly in 2006, as did progress in diagnosing people with the airborne infectious disease that is both preventable and curable.Global Tuberculosis Control 2008, released today by the World Health Organization (WHO), reports there were 9.2 million new cases of TB in 2006, including 700,000 cases among people living with HIV, and 500,000 cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB).In addition, an estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2006, while another 200,000 people with HIV died from HIV-associated TB.The 12th annual report, which contains data up to 2006 provided by 202 countries and territories, cites several reasons...

Do we have to turn TB into a terrorist threat to give it the attention it deserves? Police in Durham, North Caroline jailed a man with an active case of tuberculosis who refused to take his anti-TB drugs. Everyone at the court hearing—including the judge—wore masks to keep from getting infected. The Centers for Disease Control says there are so many cases of latent TB infection around the globe that all immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than five years should be tested and, of course, treated if necessary. More than one in three people worldwide harbors the TB bacillus. Most of them are not sick because their immune systems can keep the infection under control. Now researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France think they know why—the TB germ hides out in the fat...

Recent reports about the emergence of Extreme Drug-Resistant TB in South Africa are disquieting reminders of fundamental concerns in international public health: fragile health systems in developing countries, stretched to the breaking point as they struggle to respond to health needs today, have the potential to incubate infectious diseases that are tomorrow's global threat. While the new strains of TB that are untreatable with any of current medications affect only small numbers at the moment, the insurgent microbes cannot be ignored.Resistant strains arise when individuals with infectious diseases are incompletely treated, leaving the hardier bugs -- those not killed off by the first part of the treatment -- to flourish. Incomplete treatment, in turn, reflects serious but common...

More bad news on an extremely dangerous new strain of TB that is resistant to both first-line and second-line treatments. Simon highlighted the news last week that the extremely resistant TB (or XDR-TB) has begun showing up in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa. But the emergence of XDR-TB in Africa seems to be a recent development. The extremely deadly strain was first officially described in a report published this past March. Yesterday, the World Health Organization announced that the so-called XDR-TB is particularly prominent in Eastern Europe and Asia. Nearly one in five cases of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Latvia, for example, fit the criteria for XDR-TB. In the U.S. about 4% of multi-drug resistant TB are actually XDR-TB. The deadly strain emerges as a result of...

Frightening news out of South Africa: the World Health Organization says a new and deadly strain of tuberculosis has been identified. The strain, which has proved resistant to three of the six second-line drugs used as last line defences against TB, has killed 52 of 53 people infected over the last year in South Africa. Read the Associated Press's coverage here. At the same time, this story in the New Zealand Herald, offers hope that as number crunching power increases thanks to advances in technology, new drugs to fight TB may be just around the corner.  —Simon...

The Gates Foundation announced today that it is giving $104 million to the TB Alliance to develop a faster treatment for tuberculosis.  Folks have gotten so used to hearing about Bill Gates making large donations to global health research and development, however, that I think it makes sense to keep in mind who the ultimate benefactors are going to be. During a press conference before the announcement, Dr. Jaime Bayona of Peru talked about a mother in her fifties named Susanna. “First, her oldest son became ill with TB and then in the next two years, three of her older, grown children also developed TB,” Bayona recounted. All four of the children were diagnosed with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB, a particularly deadly form of TB that typically requires...

Think TB doesn't happen in the U.S.? Think again. Local news outlets reported last week that 120 school children in San Mateo County, California must be tested for tuberculosis after an employee at the school developed an active case...

This past Tuesday was the first time that President Bush has ever spoken about malaria in his State of the Union address. In fact, he mentioned it not once but twice. Now I realize that three days after a...

There are times when global health gets played like a zero-sum game. That’s true for journalists as well as public health advocates and policy makers. Whenever I write about malaria, for example, that means I’m not writing about tuberculosis,...

Chances are if you’ve heard of Davos, a small alpine resort community in Switzerland, you connect it with either skiing or the movers and shakers in global politics and business who are currently meeting there at the World Economic...