One of the emerging questions about the coronavirus that scientists are working to understand is why developing countries are showing markedly lower rates of mortality in COVID-19 cases than expected.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally at a speed and magnitude unprecedented in modern times, claiming more than half a million lives and damaging societies and economies. In low- and middle-income countries especially, the COVID-19 pandemic and response is interacting with the global pandemics of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, creating additional barriers to accessing essential prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care services.

A new Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund will inject nearly US $1 billion into the collapsing antibiotic development pipeline, aiming to bring two to four new antibiotics to patients by 2030.

An article in IndiaSpend presents how India has done in managing TB since 2012 through six charts based on data from India’s annual TB reports and the evaluation of the Joint Monitoring Mission Report 2019.

India, which has a quarter of the global tuberculosis cases, faces the grim prospects of COVID-19 pandemic disrupting its already over-burdened healthcare system struggling with tuberculosis and HIV, and putting a spanner in the country’s efforts to eliminate TB by 2025.

The ‘Global Plan to End TB 2018–2022: The Paradigm Shift’ is an updated costed plan and roadmap for a concerted response to tuberculosis (TB), aligned with the United Nations (UN) Political Declaration on TB. This crucial publication, led by the STOP TB Partnership, provides an estimate of the resources needed to achieve the targets and commitments set at the UN High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) on TB in September 2018.

Bedaquiline is a public good, and must be treated as such. Johnson & Johnson once again refused to meet evidence-based demands to price bedaquiline at $1/day.

120,707 people signed petitions urging the corporation to drop the price.

Stop TB Partnership and Johnson & Johnson, with support from USAID and the Global Fund, announce price reduction for bedaquiline for treatment of drug-resistant TB in low- and middle-income countries.

Sydney researchers are taking an innovative approach to designing potential COVID-19 vaccines - using a tuberculosis vaccine to deliver components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Early results from pre-clinical testing in mice are promising.