Pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Co. is expected to announce on Tuesday it "is pledging $30 million to help fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis [MDR-TB] in developing countries, a disease that kills more than 150,000 people a year," according to the Indianapolis Star.

WHO's Stop TB Department has published new recommendations related to the use of TB Interferon-Gamma Release Assays (IGRAs) as a replacement of the tuberculin skin test (TST) to detect latent TB in low- and middle-income countries (the recommendations are not intended for high-income countries or to supersede existing national guidelines in these countries).

Steve Lawn, from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, began his talk on diagnostics for HIV associated tuberculosis (TB) by reminding the audience of the enormous burden of TB in his country where one percent of the population develops TB disease each year. He gave his presentation to an audience at the 49^th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Boston Friday. In one city of 3.5 million people in South Africa, 30,000 TB cases were reported in 2009 alone and half of those individuals also had HIV infection. He also pointed out that tuberculosis is the only one of the three major infectious diseases that does not have a low-cost point of care diagnostic test.

The UAE's policy of automatic deportation for anyone suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis may unwittingly be contributing to the alarming spread of the disease in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, a world authority on TB warned yesterday.

At least 45.000 cases of tuberculosis were recorded throughout the country in 2011.

Immune Network Ltd. announces that Immunitor has successfully completed enrollment and first month-follow-up of patients with tuberculosis who were given daily pill of oral mycobacterium therapeutic vaccine (V7).

WHO's sixteenth annual report on global tuberculosis control, released on Oct 11, presents detailed and encouraging statistics, carefully interwoven with words of caution about the perils of failing to maintain disease-specific funding. Taking a global view, the numbers are undoubtedly sobering, with 8·8 million new cases of tuberculosis estimated in 2010, and about 1·45 million deaths from tuberculosis across populations with and without HIV. In 2009, 9·7 million children are thought to have been orphaned by parental deaths caused by tuberculosis (whether or not accompanied by HIV). The good news is that incidence of tuberculosis seems to have been falling worldwide since 2002.

Director of Baku Scientific Research Institute of Lung Diseases Eljan Mamedbekov addressing the 5th international conference on tuberculosis and lung diseases in Baku said that around 5000 people suffer from tuberculosis in Azerbaijan, according to 2010 data, up 56.2 percent compared to the previous years, Azadlig reported.

“In Kyrgyzstan, mortality from tuberculosis decreased by 2 times over the past 10 years. The director general of the National Center for Phthisiology Avtandil Alisherov reported today to 24.kg news agency.