The World Health Organisation (WHO) has handed over the management of the world’s largest public collection of tuberculosis (TB) strains to the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp. These TB strains are of major importance for scientific research into infectious diseases, particularly towards a better understanding of the TB bacterium’s drug resistance. In November, the European Commission and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned that antibiotic resistance in Europe was still on the rise.

Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine have breathed new life into a forgotten technique and so succeeded in detecting resistant tuberculosis in circumstances where so far this was hardly feasible. Tuberculosis bacilli that have become resistant against our major antibiotics are a serious threat to world health.