New TB drug bedaquiline illustrates need for paradigm shift in developing and ensuring accessto new treatment combinations.

30 October 2013 (PARIS, FRANCE): In an effort to develop and deliver treatments for children with tuberculosis (TB)—answering a critical need in public health today—TB Alliance, a not-for-profit organization with the mission to develop better, faster-acting, and affordable drugs for TB, has entered into a collaboration with Svizera Europe, one of the leading global supply and distribution companies for TB treatments. The partnership aims to create and enable access to new medicines for childhood TB. Tuberculosis is among the top 10 killers of children and an estimated 500,000 children have TB, but many suspect the burden could be much higher.

In future, any country with high rates of TB and HIV co-infection will have to design its programmes in a single unified application for joint TB and HIV programmes.

Colleen Daniels of Treatment Action Group challenged the delegates assembled to be more ambitious and aim for zero TB deaths, zero new infections and zero suffering and stigma.

New study shows that, despite some progress, only 4% of new drugs and vaccines approved 2000-2011 were for neglected diseases, and a ‘fatal imbalance’ remains in R&D for many neglected patients.

An on-the-spot sputum test for tuberculosis works better than the commonly-used, 125-year-old microscope method, but did not reduce illness in a southern African trial, a study said Monday.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), in its latest report on tuberculosis (TB) released this week, has said that India needs to speed up its capacity for diagnosis and treatment of patients, especially those suffering from multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis.

Few diseases need new medicines as much as tuberculosis, with most patients diagnosed by a method more than a century old and treated with drugs more than 40 years old. Yet global investment in new tools declined last year, a new report found.

As threat of drug-resistance grows, Big Pharma decreases investments in TB research by 22 percent.

New Delhi, Oct. 24: India has the world’s highest estimated burden of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients and needs to substantially accelerate its capacity for diagnosis and treatment of these patients, a World Health Organisation report has indicated.