At the Union World Conference on Lung Health Thursday, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria hosted a forum that showcased civil society tuberculosis (TB) advocacy efforts and outlined the Global Fund’s work to ensure the inclusion of civil society in country-level processes related to Fund grant-making.

It's no surprise bees have extraordinary noses, since they can detect pollen from a mile away.

Government has been urged to urgently address funding woes for the health sector in the wake of drastic cuts in the Global Fund for the Round 11 disbursements and postponement of initiating dates.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in an unprecedented collaboration with leading pharmaceutical companies and BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), launched today WIPO Re:Search, a new consortium where public and private sector organizations share valuable intellectual property (IP) and expertise with the global health research community to promote development of new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics to treat neglected tropical diseases, malaria, and tuberculosis.

(CAPE TOWN, South Africa) -- Before the advent of antibiotics, people with infectious diseases like tuberculosis were sent to sanatoria -- secluded hospitals that healed through good food, fresh air and sunlight.  The isolated buildings also quarantined infected patients, thwarting the spread of contagious and dangerous diseases.

The World Health Organization endorsed the rapid implementation of the GeneXpert MTB/RIF test for rapid tuberculosis detection, multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and TB in HIV infected individuals in December of 2010 – taking time to diagnosis down to 100 minutes, whereas other tests can take up to three months to deliver results. At that time, however, there was no data available on the efficacy of the test among children.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and most national tuberculosis programs (NTPs) recommend contact tracing, including the children in the household, and call for provision of isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) for asymptomatic children less than five years old for at least six months.  Nevertheless there is a major gap between policy and practice and most NTPs do not implement this policy.  When they do conduct contact tracing, they frequently take a passive approach and encourage the newly diagnosed person with TB to bring their close contacts to the health care facility for screening.  Mostly they don’t and this can be a huge hardship, especially in rural settings.

Katherine Floyd from the World Health Organization (WHO) kicked off an all-day symposium on TB and women and children at the Lille, France meeting of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease by summarizing WHO’s latest global TB report with an eye to looking at women and children.

Maputo — The Manica Health Research Centre (CISM) in southern Mozambique is working on trials of a new vaccine against tuberculosis.

New data released by the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the Stop TB Partnership finds that in 2010 the world spent just $617 million in tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D), or 0.3% less than 2009 funding levels - the first time TAG documents no growth since it began tracking TB research investments in 2005.