Spain/The Netherlands, 29 February 2012 – Biopharmaceutical company Biofabri (Porrino, Spain) has decided to financially support the TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI), a European foundation based in the Netherlands. The two organisations have signed a sponsorship agreement with the aim to strengthen TBVI’s activities in the search for new vaccines that are able to protect future generations against tuberculosis. Besides financial support, Biofabri will provide TBVI with strategic advice by taking a seat in the Council of Trustees.

Zaragoza, Spain – On 21 February Bill Gates met with Dr. Carlos Martin* of the University of Zaragoza and members of his team in Madrid, Spain. The scientists are working on the development of MTBVAC, a new vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) with support from Biofabri and TBVI. Gates showed great interest in the scientific background of MTBVAC, the most advanced vaccine based on attenuation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. MTBVAC aims to replace BCG and might be able to protect millions of people from getting tuberculosis. BCG is currently the only available vaccine against TB and unfortunately provides very limited protection. Without new vaccines TB cannot be eliminated.

On March 19th, the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens (CPTR) initiative will hold a briefing to discuss new momentum in the fight against tuberculosis. The event comes at a historic moment, with a wave of innovative TB research that is poised to make an impact on the disease, which kills 1.4 million people each year and is growing increasingly resistant to today’s available therapies.

29 February 2012 - Geneva - In December 2011, nine celebrities from Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa and Sudan gathered in Geneva to share their experiences and views on what it takes to be a strong national TB champion.

In an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday, Francis Adatu, head of the national leprosy and tuberculosis (TB) program in Uganda, warned that TB "remains a major public health problem" and that multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) has emerged in the country, the news service writes. "'According to our prevalence survey we found MDR-TB in 1.3 percent among new cases and 12.3 percent among people who have been exposed to drugs or treated over and over again,' Adatu said," Xinhua writes, noting that Adatu said treatment for MDR-TB was much more expensive than for drug-susceptible TB.

NAIROBI, 28 February 2012 (PlusNews) - The Kenyan government's recent failure to adequately treat a patient with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has some civil society organizations questioning whether the country's TB programme is equipped to diagnose and treat such patients.

SINGAPORE: Singapore and Australia are partnering in its research efforts to combat emerging infectious diseases.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2012) — Why is it that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can cause tuberculosis with as little as 10 cells, whereas Vibrio cholerae requires the host to ingest up to tens of millions of cells to cause cholera? This is the question that two research teams, from the Pasteur Institute, in France, and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia and the University of Lisbon, in Portugal, answer in the latest issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens.

A new paper outlining the pressing need for more advocacy efforts to address childhood TB has been published in the European Respiratory Journal.

27 February 2012 - Lucknow, India - Citizen News Service (CNS) has published a summary of responses to an online consultation on how to prevent tuberculosis (TB) in children.