15 January 2012 - Geneva - In May 2011 the Global Drug Facility (GDF) issued a warning regarding an expected shortfall in supply and temporary delays in delivery of capreomycin.

Health officials from India and the WHO are scheduled to meet in Mumbai on Tuesday to discuss how to manage the cases of at least 12 patients infected with a highly drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) strain, Bloomberg reports (Narayan, 1/17). "The 'totally drug-resistant' tuberculosis (TDR-TB) reportedly emerging in India is actually an advanced stage of drug-resistant TB, which researchers called totally drug-resistant for lack of a better term," IRIN notes (1/17).

Ukraine and Russia are the leaders of the region on growth rate of AIDS and tuberculosis cases, executive director of Global fund on fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria Michel Kazatchkine told a briefing, ForUm correspondent reports.

News reports of at least a dozen cases of “totally drug resistant” tuberculosis (TB) in India recently have raised various questions, including why India and why now?  In a letter to the editor in December’s issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases describing the first cases of TDR-TB that surfaced in India, doctors at Mumbai’s Hinduja Hospital & Research Center argue that the new strain is attributable to poor management of multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB cases in the private health care sector. The World Health Organization also released a fact sheet on the topic.

Contrary to what was previously believed, the earliest cases of the Totally Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (TDR-TB) were not the current 12 known cases reported in Mumbai or the 15 cases in Iran from 2009, but rather two middle-aged women from Italy, who died several years after first contracting the disease.

An incurable form of tuberculosis has emerged in India, the first-ever occurrence in a country with a massive epidemic and a highly mobile population that can easily spread the disease.

Variety of environmental and individual factors can cause tuberculosis (TB) incidence change. The purpose of this study was to assess the characteristics of TB trends in the period 2004 - 2008 in Taiwan by month, year, gender, age, temperature, seasonality, and aborigines.

Doctors at the Hinduja National Hospital and Research Centre in Mumbai, India, are reporting on a strain of tuberculosis (TB) emerging among patients that is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used to treat the bacterial infection. At least twelve patients have been identified so far.  The doctors do not present evidence that the resistant strain is passing from human to human, and mostly focus on how TDR can develop in TB infected individuals due to poor treatment management.

“First he stopped eating, then later he got a fever… the doctor said it was just a virus going around, but then his soft spot got swollen and I remembered the same thing happened to my daughter when she was diagnosed with meningitis at six months,” Myra said, speaking to a group of childhood TB activists about her young son London at a meeting Thursday hosted by the Treatment Action Group and co-sponsored by the Center for Global Health Policy.

• The combination of SSI’s novel tuberculosis subunit vaccine candidate and Intercell’s proprietary IC31® adjuvant enters Phase II clinical trial in HIV-positive individuals
• First results expected in 2013, a second Phase II study is planned for 2012