“India’s public health system has run out of life-saving tuberculosis medicines for children and critical testing kits for AIDS patients, causing an outcry among patient groups who warn that the shortages could cost lives and worsen problems of drug resistance,” the Financial Times reports. “Leena Menghaney, Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF]…

“Global efforts to rein in tuberculosis [TB] helped cut the death toll to 1.3 million last year, but drug-resistant forms of the disease are sparking huge concern, the WHO said Wednesday,” Agence France-Presse reports (10/23). “In its annual report on tuberculosis, the [WHO] said the world was on track to…

“Africa has shown us how we can build partnerships that can help us invest for maximum impact, especially in our fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria,” Mark Dybul, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, writes in the Huffington Post’s “Big Push” blog. “The shared…

“In the last 10 years, Africa has transformed itself from the stereotype of a dark continent of death, disease and destruction to one of triumph and growth,” Mustapha Kaloko, commissioner for social affairs for the African Union Commission, writes in a Thomson Reuters Foundation opinion piece. “Today, according to IMF…

In a news summary, the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog notes U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry testified last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the Convention of the Rights of People With Disabilities. The blog also highlights a statement from UNAIDS Executive Director Michel…

The Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog provides an overview of a new report from the Ukrainian Anti-corruption Action Centre and All Ukrainian Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS that looks at HIV and tuberculosis treatment access in the country. The report examines the public procurement system and…

A Lancet editorial responds to the WHO’s sixteenth annual report on global tuberculosis (TB) control, released on Oct 11, which shows that the incidence of tuberculosis has been falling worldwide since 2002, writing, “Successes in disease control in China and other countries show what sustained political and economic support can achieve. Rather than waiting for the elixir of economic success to arrive in all high-burden countries, committed action by donors, agencies, and governments in the most challenging settings is needed in the global campaign against tuberculosis.”

This post in the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog reports the results of a Zambia-South Africa TB and AIDS Reduction (ZAMSTAR) program study, released Monday, which “demonstrate that household counseling — defined as the unpacking of concerns about TB and HIV within households and facilitating prompt diagnosis and treatment…

SciDev.Net examines tuberculosis (TB) in India, which has the world’s highest TB burden, and some experts’ hopes that researchers in the country can develop accurate and affordable diagnostic test kits. “The recognition that no new anti-TB vaccine is expected before 2015 has prompted experts to pin their hopes on improving diagnosis,” the news service writes. “One cause for worry in India is a plateau in the number of new cases being detected at 87 percent of actual infections, over the past five years,” and another is the “slow rate of decline of the disease in India,” SciDev.Net notes, adding, “Despite the drawbacks, global experts at [a recent TB] conference were optimistic that Indian diagnostic companies would soon form a world hub for high-quality generic diagnostics” (Padma, 11/3).

In response to Michael Gerson’s November 11 column in which he said the end of AIDS is possible because of combination prevention and treatment innovations, David Bryden, the Stop TB advocacy officer at RESULTS, writes in a Washington Post letter to the editor, “Another benefit of [HIV] treatment is that it sharply reduces deaths from tuberculosis [TB], which is the primary killer of people living with HIV/AIDS.” He says that “to fully succeed in Africa, where TB and HIV/AIDS are often two sides of the same coin, we have to quickly identify people who have TB or who are vulnerable to it and get them the services they need,” which also means developing an accurate quick test for the disease.