Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics when stressed, finds research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. In particular E. coli grown at high temperatures become resistant to rifampicin.

After six years as UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis, Jorge Sampaio’s time has come to an end. In a farewell message Sampaio, who only fully realised the full magnitude of TB when becoming Special Envoy, reminds world dignitaries that:

In a landmark event, nine major global health organizations joined representatives of African civil society platforms on 19 and 20 February in a meeting - More money for health, more health for the money - at the offices of the GAVI Alliance. At a lunchtime session, Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI; Lucica Ditiu, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership; Philippe Duneton, Deputy Executive Director of UNITAID; Luiz Loures, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS; Linda Mafu, Head, Political and Civil Society Department at the Global Fund; and Thomas Teuscher, Deputy Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership agreed with the assembled civil society organizations on a common objective: joint efforts for domestic resource mobilization for health in Africa must be harmonized.

UCL marks this year’s World TB Day with an event run in conjunction with The Lancet Infectious Diseases: 

The workshop will be held in Denver CO, USA on 9 September 2013.

Tuberculosis remains a major cause of death worldwide. The rise and spread of drug resistance and synergistic interaction with the HIV epidemic are posing difficult challenges and threatening global efforts at tuberculosis control.

Concomitant administration of antituberculosis treatment and ART is associated with drug interactions, mediated largely by the inducing effect of rifampicin, and shared drug toxicity. Few controlled studies have compared different ART regimens in patients with tuberculosis, and thus the report by Maryline Bonnet and colleagues in The Lancet Infectious Diseases of the CARINEMO study,a randomised comparison of nevirapine-based ART with efavirenz-based ART in participants with tuberculosis, is welcome.

MUMBAI—Here on center stage in the global crisis of drug-resistant tuberculosis, top doctors are sounding a new alarm: India's emergency strategy to defeat the disease may be having the opposite effect—encouraging TB instead to mutate into more deadly and unstoppable strains.

The Union's TREAT TB initiative has created an E-tool for Operational Research to help meet the urgent need for health professionals with the skills to conduct this type of research independently.

This is a piece that has done the rounds of three mainstream newspapers. It was accepted by one but not published so I sent it to others. The second and third did not even acknowledge the many mails I sent enquiring about its fate. Does that make me a bad writer? Is the media my enemy? Do they have something personal against me? It’s none of these. It’s just that TB does not make news. But I want to get the messages out. So I’m using my own platform. I request all those who read this to please pass it on. That’s the best we can do under the circumstances.