Abstract

LONDON — London is famed for its historic sites, its double-decker buses and its West End shows, but the city now has a more dubious distinction: Britain’s public health agency says it has become the tuberculosis capital of Western Europe.

Scientists have discovered a signature of tuberculosis that can be detected in patients' blood, paving the way for an improved diagnostic test.

LONDON: Over 9.3 lakh Indians with the world’s most dangerous air borne disease – tuberculosis, are currently going undetected and being ‘missed’ by the country’s health system. Around 3 million people - equal to one in three people falling ill with TB are not being detected globally.

Gains in tuberculosis control at risk due to 3 million missed patients and drug resistance.

It is estimated there are more than 5 million people sick with multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in the world today, which afflicts approximately 440,000 people each year, including children. Likewise, 35.3 million people are living with HIV out of which 3.3 million are children. Most of these children acquire the virus from their HIV-infected mothers during pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding, while poverty, weak immune systems, malnourishment, HIV, and maternal TB make children more vulnerable to getting TB from infected adults. 74, 000 children succumb to TB every year while AIDS related paediatric deaths are 230,000.

21 October 2013 – Johannesburg – With a TB and Mining Regional Summit planned for 2 February 2014 in Cape Town, mining company representatives have agreed to hold discussions on how to highlight and strengthen corporate sector contributions to addressing tuberculosis (TB) in the mining sector.

18 October 2013 – Brussels – On the initiative of Professor Michel Kazatchkine, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), representatives from six countries in the region gathered today to discuss some of the challenges that EECA countries face as they confront the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and multidrug-resistant TB epidemics.

India's exports of generics have been growing at a rate of 24% per year over the last four years, and are set to continue this "explosive growth," an international conference has been told.

I was in Brussels earlier this week delivering a speech at the European AIDS Conference and coming on top of the visit to Romania last week, it's given me some valuable time to reflect on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region a year or so into the job as the UN Special Envoy for the region.