BANGALORE, India — Dec. 3, 2012 — Giri Prasad, a 33-year-old tailor who lives in Delhi, first noticed the pain below his ribs. He went to see a doctor, but when it didn’t subside, he traveled to the hospital where he eventually learned he had tuberculosis.

University of Otago expertise is set to play a key role in European Commission (EC) funded research into links between infectious and non-communicable diseases – in this case tuberculosis (TB) and type 2 diabetes.

HIV & AIDS treatment in practice (HATIP) is a regular email newsletter for healthcare workers and community-based organisations on HIV treatment in resource-limited settings.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 53,000 people contract tuberculosis (TB) every year in Afghanistan. The available figures indicate that 66 percent of new cases are women and 10 percent are children.

Mark Harrington writing in the Atlantic online - The bold, aggressive new plan released by Hillary Clinton once again wildly surpasses in ambition what U.S. officials dare attempt in this country.

Well, perhaps yes. While talking to Citizen News Service - CNS at the 43rd Union World Conference on Lung Health in Kuala Lumpur Mark Harrington, Executive Director of Treatment Action Group (TAG), wondered why we are doing better in responding to HIV, which was discovered only in 1981 and for which there was no effective treatment until 1996, while we are losing the battle against TB which was discovered in 1882 and the first drugs for it came in 1948. He rued the fact that we are falling short of meeting the targets for controlling TB and reducing mortality from TB by 50% by 2015 as compared to 1990.”

An unregulated and greedy private sector and an inefficient and under- funded public sector in India generously allows its patients to choose between the devil and the deep seas. According to the National Family Health Survey-3, nearly two-thirds of all households (70% in urban and 63% in rural areas) in India generally seek health care from the private medical sector, while only one-third of households use the public medical sector. The most common reason given for not using public sector health care facilities is poor quality of the service, followed by non-availability of a facility nearby, long waiting time, and inconvenient hours of operation. This is a clear indication that India's public health delivery infrastructure fails to protect the interests of vulnerable groups.

Dr Manoon Leechawengwong, is the chairman of the Drug Resistant TB Research Fund at Bangkok’s Siriraj Foundation and is also the Immediate Past President of Thai AIDS Society-- His foundation is under the patronage of the King’s sister--The Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana Krom Luang Naradhiwas Rajanagarindra. He recently spoke to CNS in Bangkok about the rising problem of multi drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) in Thailand. Dr Manoon believes that drug susceptibility testing (DST) is the first crucial step in managing drug-resistant TB. It is a necessity, and not a luxury, to do culture testing for all TB patients, to help guide the physicians to select the optimal anti-TB medicines. However, a major barrier to controlling MDR-TB in Thailand (and elsewhere too) is the lack of cheap, rapid and accurate diagnostic test methods. Dr Manoon’s hospital has a cheap technique to detect MDR-TB at the cost of USD 4-5, provided AFB (Acid Fast Bacilli) is smear positive.

The following post is brought to you by Steve Lewis, the Global Health Advocacy Manager at RESULTS UK, who last week attended a hearing in European Parliament on ‘Funding crisis at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and its impact on EU countries most affected by multi-drug resistant TB, in particular Romania’:

Countries receiving the rapid tests are: Côte d'Ivoire, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Burma.