Read the announcement here.

Civil society opposition here has strengthened against a U.S.-proposed free trade zone that would include some dozen countries around the Pacific Rim.

The Wall Street Journal profiles the case of a man infected with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) who is being detained in South Texas after a "three-month odyssey through 13 countries -- from his homeland of Nepal through South Asia, Brazil, Mexico, and finally into Texas -- show[ing] the way in which dangerous new strains of the disease can migrate across the world unchecked." The newspaper notes, "In recent months the Wall Street Journal has exposed widening TB drug resistance in hot spots like India, and shown that the U.S. is surprisingly unprepared for the growing global problem," adding, "Most U.S. cases of drug-resistant TB occur in people who were born abroad, according to the [CDC]."

The markets for anti-infective drugs in Malawi, Mauritius and Zimbabwe are set to increase from combined a value of US$186.2 million in 2011 to $377.2 million in 2018, according to new forecasts.

The DR-TB Training Network will offer two web courses in 2013:

Nano Labs Corp. is pleased to present industry with promising biological diagnostics test results obtained at macro-level, on a miniaturized tuberculosis biosensor platform.

The Institute of Medicine released a 678 page evaluation of PEPFAR (see here). Below are a few highlights I pulled out on TB-HIV. Page numbers correspond to the pages in the PDF.

India’s urgent battle against tuberculosis is almost invisible, until you start to look for it. Then you will find it everywhere: in the hospital down the street, in the corner pharmacy, in labs, offices, and schools. With some two million new cases each year, India has more TB patients than any other single country. The government is fighting this ancient, airborne bacteria in both small, far-flung villages and the some of the biggest cities in the world.

"The side effects were intolerable," said MSF patient and blogger Mariam Davtyan, "I called the doctor and was crying. I felt so bad I couldn't explain to him everything that was going on. I only told him that I was absolutely unable to take those drugs".

An outbreak of tuberculosis in the skid row area of downtown Los Angeles may have exposed up to 4,500 individuals to the bacterium that causes the deadly disease and has left federal officials scrambling to intervene.