In his famous novel ‘Barefoot,’ prominent Romanian writer Zaharia Stancu (1902-1974) has a terrible fragment: two children from a village located in the plains of Teleorman County were playing together. One has a piece of bread, which he starts eating in front of his friend. In those old times, a century ago, bread was a luxury for the Romanian peasant. When the other boy inquires about the provenance of the miracle “treat,” the boy says that his parents gave it as alms for his brother, who had recently died of tuberculosis. The friend asks for a little bit of the bread, making the terrible promise that he will return the favour soon, when his smaller sister will die of the same disease.For a very long time in history, tuberculosis – or TB – also known in the old times as ‘consumption’ was ravaging Romanian. In peasants’ families with 7-8 children, the disease was taking a heavy toll, so if one or two eventually escaped, it was still a miracle.

Implementing Collaborative TB-HIV Activities: A Programmatic Guide, by  P. I. Fujiwara, R. A. Dlodlo, O. Ferroussier and colleagues summarizes The Union's experience in developing approaches to integrated TB-HIV care for adults in resource-limited settings.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs on Tuesday approved a $52.1 billion FY 2013 spending bill for state and foreign operations, The Hill's "Global Affairs" blog reports (Pecquet, 5/22). The subcommittee also released a bill summary (5/22). "The bill includes funding for U.S. global health programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department comprising a significant portion of funding for the Global Health Initiative (GHI)," according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's "Policy Tracker."

Elsie, Bernard and their five children share a tiny tin-walled single room in Nyalenda, an informal settlement in Kisumu, in Kenya's Nyanza Province. They are both infected with HIV and TB.

At the 65th World Health Assembly, UNITAID held a technical briefing to propose a new paradigm for middle-income countries to drive multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) markets for greater public health good.

The Global Fund has rescinded its approval of a Round 10 TB grant from the Russian Federation. The official reason advanced by the Fund was that the period allotted for negotiations of the grant agreement had expired with no agreement having been signed. However, the real reason appears to have been the fact that the Government of the Russian Federation was opposed to the country receiving any more grants from the Global Fund because it now sees itself as a donor to the Fund. In addition, the Global Fund did not want to sign a grant agreement unless the Government was on board.

Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a microfluidic chip to test for latent tuberculosis. They hope the test will be cheaper, faster and more reliable than current testing for the disease.

Tuberculosis independently predicts death from lung cancer in the elderly, according to a new study from researchers in Hong Kong.

Head of Ministry of Health Affairs Health Research and Development Agency, dr. Trihono, said Indonesia, one of world's most populous nations, has the fourth-highest tuberculosis burden in the world after India, China, and South Africa.