Musa Ernest Nkoko is a 52-year old ex-miner with multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis. He lives in KaShoba in the Lubombo region of Swaziland with his wife and five children aged between 9 and 27 years.

To coincide with World TB day (24th March), The Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID) publishes a special supplement: 'TUBERCULOSIS and TB/HIV/AIDS: Unanswered Questions and Controversies', guest edited by Professor Alimuddin 'Ali' Zumla (Division of Infection and Immunity, UCL) and Dr. Marco Schito (Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine*).

YSTERPLAAT, 23 March 2012 (PlusNews) - To a casual observer the two dozen children running round in the grassy schoolyard look like ordinary kids playing, but the surrounding buildings are the wards of the Brooklyn Chest Hospital (BCH), which specializes in treating severe cases of tuberculosis (TB), a disease rarely associated with children.

24 March 2012 - Geneva - On this World TB Day we want to make the world aware that children are suffering and dying from tuberculosis (TB) and that this is shameful.

The only tuberculosis vaccine currently available is already over 90 years old - and is unsatisfactory in terms of its effectiveness. Although it protects young children against developing tuberculosis, it quickly loses its effectiveness and does not protect young people and adults against the infection. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have now developed an improved vaccine which has been undergoing clinical trials on humans since 2008. The safety and tolerability of the vaccine candidate is being tested in a Phase II trial on infants in South Africa. The results of the preceding Phase I trial have already shown that the vaccine candidate fulfils the relevant safety requirements and that its mechanism of action works.

In a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels, ECDC Director Marc Sprenger underlined the importance of sufficient resources at national level to diagnose and adequately treat tuberculosis.   

Many resource-poor countries, especially those in Africa, have always depended on other countries for their drug supplies, either through foreign aid or buying cheap generics from the pharmacy of the developing world — India.

New Delhi, 23 March 2012 – The growing number of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) cases in India, lends greater urgency to solve major problems surrounding the treatment of TB and regulation of TB drugs in the country’s private market, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said today, alongside the Peoples’ Health Movement, Stop TB Partnership and Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+).

The number of tuberculosis cases in the U.K. rose 5 percent to more than 9,000 last year, the Health Protection Agency said.

Treatment Action Group analysis finds global TB R&D rose by just 2% from 2009: Less than one-third of the global need.