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).

The WHO “hasn’t accepted the term and still considers the cases to be what’s now called extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR. However, Dr. Paul Nunn, a coordinator at the WHO’s Stop TB Department in Geneva, said there is ample proof that these virtually untreatable cases do exist,” the Associated Press writes (Stobbe/Naqvi, 1/16). According to IRIN, the “WHO is convening a meeting of TB experts in March to consider whether a new TB definition is needed” (1/17). In a recent briefing note, the WHO said, “If ‘totally drug-resistant’ TB defines a subset of XDR-TB with different characteristics to other XDR-TB cases, particularly with respect to the outcome of such cases, then an internationally recognized definition may be needed” (January 2012).