Today (2 October), Romania launches a four-year national plan to fight tuberculosis, during the visit of the WHO Regional Director for Europe and the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy. The Romanian national action plan to prevent and manage multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a timely response to a growing public health threat, to which over 80 000 people in the WHO European Region fall victim each year.

The toolkit is designed to help countries develop or strengthen their national response to drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The Stop-TB Partnership Romania welcomes the Ministry of Health’s decision to approve the National Plan for Multidrug-ResistantTuberculosis (MDR-TB) Prevention and Management in Romania, which answers the most urgent needs for treatment, diagnosis and care for the MDR-TB patients in Romania and is in line with the “Consolidated Action Plan to prevent and combat Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis in the WHO European Region”.

The Stakeholder and Community Engagement Workgroup of the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens initiative launches guidelines that will facilitate the involvement of communities and participants in the conduct of TB drug trials.

On 10-year anniversary of landmark Thai case, new ‘Patent Opposition Database’ aims to boost access to medicines in countries increasingly hit by high drug prices.

Dalton Pharma Services a leading Canadian provider of drug discovery, development and manufacturing services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, announced that the Company and the University of Guelph are developing a vaccine against tuberculosis. Initiation of the program was made possible through government funding directed at applied research.

In a stunning development, following an obscure vote of Heads of State at the Africa Union in 2007 (Assembly Council/AU/Dec. 138(VIII)), the AU Scientific, Technical, and Research Commission has proposed a draft statute to establish the Pan-Africa Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO).  This proposed legislation will be presented to a meeting of the African Ministers in charge of Science and Technology on 6-12 November 2012 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There is a certain absurdity about an American anthropologist traveling to Brussels to the European Union to report on drug-resistant tuberculosis and brief decision-makers on the severity of TB in Romania. While some consider TB in Romania to be a national issue, TB is never a ‘national matter’. Fighting it requires the cooperation of national governments, international organizations, public and private researchers, as well as the international corporations that produce lifesaving TB medicines and diagnostic equipment. Even in the comparatively wealthy economies of Europe, it is not well controlled.

Download the press release from here.