Technological development in the diagnosis of tuberculosis has been stagnant during the past 10 years, leading to the disease becoming a serious threat, an official says.

Every morning, Rodgers Owino, a plumber in Kisumu County, wakes up at cockcrow to prepare for work. His morning routine is like that of every other average Kenyan—he showers, gets dressed and eats breakfast.

Fight against neglected global diseases moves another step forward through a partnership between CDRD and NGDI-UBC

TB/HIV co-infection represents a novel pathogenic scenario at the global level. Our knowledge about the mechanisms of interaction of the two pathogens still has many gaps that need to be filled in order to develop preventive measures against the two diseases.

London — A hundred years ago there was no way to treat tuberculosis (TB) except with rest, fresh air and nutritious food. Forty years later the discovery of antibiotics transformed treatment and TB has been a curable disease for more than half a century, but the disease still kills nearly 4,000 people a day. The goals set by the World Health Organization (WHO) to halve the incidence of TB by 2015 and eliminate it as a public health problem by 2050 seem far out of reach.

Treatment Action Group (TAG) is deeply disappointed by President Obama’s proposed cuts to PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and bilateral TB funds, freezing of NIH (National Institutes of Health) research as well as the insufficient attention to the worsening domestic AIDS crisis in the administration's fiscal year 2013 budget plan.

This is the first in a series of conversations with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), discussing the CDC’s role in global HIV and tuberculosis research and development.  The following interview is with Kayla Laserson, Director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)/CDC Field Research Station in Kisumu, Kenya. Dr. Laserson oversees a staff of over 950 individuals and a comprehensive research program in HIV, malaria, TB, emerging infectious diseases, demographic surveillance, and programmatic service delivery of HIV care, treatment and prevention programs. 

Nanologica leverages its carrier materials to play a key part in the four-year EU project, ORCHID. Led by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the €10 million project aims to discover and develop new medicines against multiple drug resistant tuberculosis.

We need a new vision for TB writes AIDS and TB activist Mark Harrington, Executive Director of the Treatment Action Group.

The Obama Administration released its fiscal year 2013 budget today with a proposed $1.65 billion funding level—an increase of 26.9 percent – for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to meet the US pledge of $4 billion over 3 years.  This substantial and welcome budget request for the Global fund clearly came at the expense of PEPFAR, the U.S.’s flagship bilateral program which is slated for a stunning cut of $542.9 million—a reduction of almost 13 percent.   Global tuberculosis also saw a reduction of 10 percent, with a proposed budget request of $224 million compared to this year’s budget of $249 million.  On a more upbeat note, the President’s budget would restore language allowing the use of federal funds for lifesaving syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV and hepatitis transmission among injection drug users.