The Wall Street Journal examines how "Greece has seen decades of advances in public health rolled back, as a flood of illegal immigrants, a dysfunctional government and budget cuts ravage a once proud health-care system." Noting "[o]ver the past two years, more than 50 endemic cases of [malaria] and more than 100 imported cases have been identified in Greece," the newspaper writes, "The return of malaria, a scourge in developing countries, to Greece is a disturbing indicator of the nation's decline since it crashed in 2009 under the weight of a debt binge." The Wall Street Journal examines the history of malaria's return to the country and how the government is responding. "In addition to malaria, public health officials say they are worried about rises in everything from infectious respiratory-tract diseases and skin conditions to tuberculosis and HIV," the newspaper notes (Granitsas, 11/14).

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that is still a major threat to Fiji's population.

Cape Town - A Caledon prison has unveiled a new testing apparatus aimed at curbing the spread of tuberculosis among inmates.

"Ukraine under QUARANTINE!” – this is the letter received today by the Ambassadors of foreign countries to Ukraine. This is how community and patient organizations have warned the global community about three epidemics raging in Ukraine: hepatitis, TB and AIDS. This is how Ukrainians with life-threatening diseases tried to draw attention of high officials toward complete disregard of the problem of epidemics in their country.

"A group of experts calling for a global treaty to stop the lethal trade in fake medicines has been barred from attending a World Health Organization meeting, highlighting deep divisions that are blocking progress on the subject," Reuters reports (Hirschler, 11/13). In an analysis published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Tuesday, Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa and colleagues from the World Federation of Public Health Associations, International Pharmaceutical Federation, and the International Council of Nurses "urge the World Health Organization to set up a framework akin to its one [on] tobacco control to safeguard the public," BBC News writes. The experts "say while governments and drug companies alike deplore unsafe medicines, it is difficult to achieve agreement on action because discussions too often trespass into conflict-prone areas such as pharmaceutical pricing or intellectual property rights," the news service writes, adding, "Although some countries prohibit fake medicines under national law, there is no global treaty which means organized criminals can continue to trade using haven countries where laws are lax or absent" (Roberts, 11/13).

Médecins Sans Frontières data results reveal urgent need to scale up drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment.

Flemish biologists lead by Joris Messens (VIB / Vrije Universiteit Brussel) have discovered that Mycobacterium tuberculosis – the bacterium that causes tuberculosis – has an ingenious defence mechanism against oxygen. This knowledge is important in the search for a treatment for tuberculosis. 9.4 million people are infected with tuberculosis annually and 1.7 million people die as a result.

Some 100 TB activists marched through the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, demanding more ambitious targets for stopping TB, the funding to meet those targets and an end to the use of detrimental language in the TB community.

Treatment Action Group and the Stop TB Partnership issue update on 2011 global TB R&D investment trends; 2011 funding increases 3% to US$649.6 million, but annual US$1.35 billion funding gap remains.

13 November 2012 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - The Desmond Tutu TB Centre at Stellenbosch University in South Africa’s Western Cape is the winner of this year’s Kochon Prize. The centre is named for its patron, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who had tuberculosis (TB) as a child and has throughout his lifetime advocated on behalf of people affected by TB. The centre is being honoured today for its ground-breaking research on childhood TB and for pioneering community-based approaches to TB and HIV care.