If enacted, the President’s budget would slash U.S. global TB funding to its lowest level since 2009.

Tubersol, a product of Sanofi Pasteur Limited, is in short supply nationwide until at least the end of May 2013. Tubersol is one of two purified-protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin products licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The manufacturer has notified CDC that 50-dose vials of Tubersol will remain unavailable until the end of May 2013 and that supplies of 10-dose vials are still being reestablished: the product is available only by contacting Sanofi directly (at https://www.vaccineshoppe.com/index.cfm? or telephone, 800-822-2463). JHP Pharmaceuticals, LLC, the manufacturer of Aplisol, the other PPD tuberculin product licensed by FDA, has notified FDA that the product is available in restricted quantity. Acute local shortages of Aplisol also have been reported to CDC by TB control officials, as health-care providers switch from Tubersol to Aplisol. The shortages of Aplisol probably will diminish as Tubersol supplies are restored to their preshortage availability in the normal distribution networks. This report advises public health officials, clinicians, and workers in occupational health and infection control about how to adapt to the shortage.

TOLIARA, 1 May 2013 (IRIN) - Health experts fear the interruption of food assistance in Madagascar is increasing incidence of tuberculosis (TB) in Toliara, the capital city of Madagascar’s southern Atsimo-Andrefana region.

Tuberculosis or TB remains a significant health problem in Asia and Africa causing extensive human suffering and loss of life. In recent years the causative bacteria has become resistant to available anti-TB drugs. The resistance can be of various levels, such as MDR or multi-drug resistant TB, when the most commonly used drugs rifampicin and isoniazid become ineffective. It becomes difficult to treat XDR or extensively drug resistant TB where the bacteria become resistant not only to these two drugs but also injectable and other second-line drugs.

Rats are notorious for spreading nasty diseases. Think the plague, lassa fever and even salmonella.

30 April 2013 - Thimpu, Bhutan - The third South-East Asia Regional Green Light Committee (GLC) meeting ended on an ambitious note, with representatives from national tuberculosis (TB) programmes, the World Health Organization (WHO), technical agencies and civil society all showing their support for a vision of zero TB deaths, infections and suffering.

A new film produced for the International Committee of the Red Cross shows how Azerbaijan has managed to achieve some of the best cure rates for multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) in prisons in the former Soviet Union and one of the best worldwide.

Richard Stone, International News Editor for the journal Science, last month traveled to Pyongyang, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), to check in on the country's only laboratory capable of detecting strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

25 April 2013 - The Stop TB Partnership Secretariat has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to support its initiative to brand tuberculosis (TB).

Scientists at The University of Nottingham are studying whether harmful bacteria found in cattle could be harnessed to protect livestock from the devastating disease bovine tuberculosis (TB).