CHENNAI: People with tuberculosis have high chances of becoming diabetic, just as people with diabetes are at a higher risk of contracting tuberculosis, experts said here on Saturday. Ahead of the DRC Gold Medal Oration 2011 organised by MV Hospital for Diabetes, WHO department of chronic diseases and health promotion responsible officer Dr Gojka Roglic said with 61.3 million diabetics, India has the second largest population of diabetics after China, where there are 90 million diabetics.

Alarming new data suggest that the global scope of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is much more vast than previously estimated, requiring a concerted international effort to combat this deadlier form of the disease, the medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today.

Tuberculosis on the retreat in Europe but concerns about drug-resistant TB and treatment failure remain.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a proposed rule today that would encourage the development of a type of test used to detect cases of tuberculosis (TB). This rule would lower the current risk classification for nucleic acid-based tests allowing manufacturers to utilize the faster, more streamlined clearance pathway for medical devices.

The TB Alliance and other organizations spearheading the research and development of new and improved tools to treat, diagnose, and prevent TB need your help to ensure that appropriate levels of political commitment and financial investment are dedicated toward TB R&D.

For too long, tuberculosis has not received sufficient attention. The result of this neglect is needless suffering: in 2010 alone, nearly 9 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died, with 95 per cent of these deaths occurring in developing countries. These numbers make tuberculosis the second top infectious killer of adults worldwide.

The Government earmarked sh4b to procure Tuberculosis drugs in the next six months.

Early diagnosis of Tuberculosis in people who have HIV is a challenge to the health system. Yet, this is crucial as TB has proven to be a significant cause of illness and death in people who have HIV.

The HIV/TB study showes that 30% of people living with HIV in the Eastern European region also suffering from TB, die within 12 months after the diagnosis, and most of them die from TB. The development of MDR-TB is a huge problem not only for the people living with HIV, but also for the rest of the population in the region and in the rest of Europe.

Mycobacterial disease incidence has dropped steadily through the combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) era in Spanish children with HIV. But HIV-positive children still have higher mycobacterial disease incidence than children without HIV.