Two large multinational pharmaceutical companies are fighting for patents and monopoly pricing in Indian courts. The outcomes of the cases – involving Novartis and Bayer – are likely to determine the country’s future as a major global supplier of low-cost essential medicines.

Specialists fear the closure of health clinics in the Torres Strait this week could see a dangerous new drug-resistant form of tuberculosis emerge on mainland Australia.

Investigators at the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID) and the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) announced today that they reached a significant milestone by determining 1,000 protein structures from infectious disease organisms. The knowledge gained from these structures should lead to new interventions for the deadly diseases caused by these pathogens.

It’s not a surprise to anyone who knows anything about African prisons to hear that HIV and tuberculosis (TB) rates are staggering, and that health care is virtually nonexistent. Less intuitive is the assertion that I outlined in a recent article that governments and health donors should fund criminal justice reforms as critical HIV and TB interventions.

The South African pharmaceutical market is expected to almost double in the next six years due to profitable government contracts for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis medications, according to the latest report from market analysts GBI Research.

Starting from 2015, there will be mandatory International Drug Manufacturing Standards approved by the World Health Organization introduced in Ukraine to protect patients from poor quality drug use. This agreement was reached by patients and the Ministry of Health during the round-table discussion on May 31, 2012.

One in 10 cases of tuberculosis in China cannot be treated by the most commonly-used drugs, driven by a lack of testing and misuse of medicine, according to a national survey that showed for the first time the size of the drug-resistant epidemic.

HIV-positive South Africans with a CD4 count below 100 cells/µL and hemoglobin below 10 g/dL had a 3 to 5 times higher risk of tuberculosis, according to results of a 422-person study. The findings have implications for the “three I’s”—intensified case finding, isoniazid preventive therapy, and infection control.

Integrating care of tuberculosis and HIV infection, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), improved TB treatment outcomes and antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation in a 712-person comparison in an urban Ugandan HIV clinic.

The investigational drug delamanid may help combat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, results of a phase II trial indicate.