CHENNAI: The most feared form of drug-resistant tuberculosis has arrived in Chennai. Doctors at the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) in Chennai report that they have since July treated a few TB patients who did not respond to any of the existing antibiotics for the disease. Some of the patients have died.

MUMBAI—As dawn broke on July 16, a tiny woman pushed a metal trunk aboard a train, pausing a moment to cough into the green-and-black-print scarf around her head. Her husband carried a comically large water jug.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial infection caused by the organism, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and it’s deadly. Not only that, due to the problems with determining the appropriate antibiotic, multiresistant tuberculosis has the potential to become a worldwide epidemic, negating all medical achievements of the last several decades. The good news: a new approach to finding antibiotic-resistant TB could dramatically improve treatment options.

The TB Alliance and its partners will be presenting recent advances in TB research and development at the ICAAC 2012 conference. Posters and presentations will detail important findings from the The University of Auckland and TB Alliance’s lead preclinical TB drug candidate, the nitroimidazole, TBA-354.

The Zero Declaration is a cry for global action against TB. Read and sign on to the Declaration!

It has been 30 years since South Africa altered the Tuberculosis (TB) treatment guidelines, however a recent change holds the promise of curing more drug resistant (DR) TB cases and a reduction in infections.

Weaknesses in South Africa's public health system have been cited as being among the reasons tuberculosis has increased four-fold in the last 15 years.

An essay seeking to elucidate the reasons for the anemic response to drug-resistant tuberculosis by examining the recent history of tuberculosis policy.

Infection with HIV is a major risk factor for the development of resistance to key second-line anti-tuberculosis (TB) drugs, US investigators report in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.