“To commemorate World TB Day 2013, the Lancet Infectious Diseases publishes a series of papers on tuberculosis, a disease that has long plagued human beings and was declared a global emergency in 1993 by WHO,” the series homepage states. “Without concerted action from political leaders, health policymakers, funders, and others, health…

“South Africa will expand its rollout of GeneXpert tuberculosis (TB) testing machines, which can diagnose TB and drug-resistant TB within 90 minutes, but concerns remain about the capacity to back up this commitment with supplies and treatment,” IRIN reports. “At the opening of the TB Vaccines Third Global Forum in…

The following is a sampling of blog posts published this week marking International Women’s Day : PEPFAR’s Gender Challenge Fund:  At the Intersection of Gender and HIV (Goosby, 3/11). A Conversation in Afghanistan: Perspectives on International Women’s Day (Ehsaas, 3/9). The Best Investment in Global Women’s Health (Sturchio/Barnes, 3/8). Why…

U.N. Food Agencies Issue Warning About Food Shortages In N. Korea “North Korea’s government food distribution system will run dry in May and put one-quarter of the country’s 24 million residents at risk of starvation,” the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said in a report “sent to diplomats in donor…

Science Magazine reports on the recent push to make preventing and treating cancer a global priority, particularly in developing countries, where it’s estimated “less than 5% of the world’s cancer resources are [currently] spent.”

What To Do About Antibiotic Resistance: A Lancet Infectious Diseases editorial describes the growing public concerns over a global rise in antimicrobial resistance. “Bearing in mind that our objective is to contain antibiotic resistance rather than eradicate it, several policies could be adopted to help guarantee a future for antibiotics,” the…

U.S. Experiencing High Number Of Measles Cases, Most Linked To Other Countries The U.S. is on track to record more measles cases this year than in the last decade, with nearly all of the cases linked to other countries, including those in Europe, where more than 6,500 cases have been reported…

The food safety office of the WHO on Thursday announced that the bacterium responsible for the E. coli outbreak in Europe is a strain never seen before in humans and could mean “the infection could prove unusually difficult to bring under control,” Nature News reports (Turner, 6/2).

“Four more people have died in Germany, health officials said Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths from an E. coli outbreak to 35,” CNN reports.

In this post in the Global Post’s “Global Pulse” blog, journalist John Donnelly reports on how a machine developed by researchers at the TB Laboratory at the Lung Center of the Philippines “that can detect multi-drug resistant [tuberculosis (MDR-TB)] in record time may revolutionize TB treatment.” According to the blog, the GeneXpert, dubbed by researchers as the “espresso maker,” grew out of a collaboration among partners put together by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics in Geneva and “can detect [MDR-TB] in two hours instead of the old way of growing cultures that took two months.”