CNS with support from Lilly MDR TB Partnership visited 14 sites of Programmatic Management of Drug-resistant Tuberculosis (PMDT) in India and conducted key informant interviews on four key themes (counselling, infection control, diagnostics and laboratory services, and treatment and care services) and came up with specific recommendations. Those interviewed included patients of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), cured MDR-TB patients, their family members, nurses, laboratory technicians, scientists, physicians, home-based care workers, counsellors, among others. The report, was submitted to Planning Commission; Central TB Division of Government of India; among other authorities. It was also disseminated at 8th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ 2013) in Helsinki. Fifth part of this report also includes personal stories of MDR-TB and XDR-TB patients currently on treatment and cured MDR-TB patients.

For more than a decade, Dr. KJ Seung has been working with Partners In Health to stem the spread of tuberculosis (TB), which kills more than 1 million people every year. From Peru to Lesotho, Seung, 43, has helped design, implement, and scale up programs that deliver effective treatment to patients with hard-to-treat, drug-resistant strains of TB.

In a village, 30km outside the Siberian city Tomsk, 59-year-Nadezdha takes her daily dose of 20 tablets and is given an injection.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/EURO) regularly collaborate on tuberculosis (TB) surveillance, prevention and control in the European Union. Based on a request from the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Latvia, ECDC and WHO/EURO conducted a joint country visit from 22 to 26 October 2012, with the objective of providing a comprehensive overview of tuberculosis prevention, control and care in the country, and presenting the health authorities with key recommendations and suggested actions to improve work in this area.

Momentum toward gathering an effective arsenal of treatment for tuberculosis may have gathered speed in recent years, the 2013 Pipeline Report jointly released by the Treatment Action Group and HIV i-base in June pointed out, yet it falls far short of people sick and infected with TB worldwide need now.

Patients with severe psoriasis appear to have an increased risk for developing tuberculosis, according to study results.

Active household contact investigation is a powerful tool to detect and treat tuberculosis at early stages and the only method to control TB in high-TB-burden countries.

DUSHANBE, July 29, 2013, Asia-Plus – The review took place from June 15 to June 24, in response to the request of the Ministry of Health of Tajikistan for an external review of Tajikistan’s National Tuberculosis (TB) Program.

It is 8am on a Wednesday and the final rush of people going to work and taking children to school is dying down. Hezekiel Nyoni (38) greets the Somali shopkeeper as he strolls past the tuck shop near his Tekwane South house, an RDP settlement outside Mbombela in Mpumalanga. 

The slightest variation in a sequence of DNA can have profound effects. Modern genomics has shown that just one mutation can be the difference between successfully treating a disease and having it spread rampantly throughout the body.