IDSA’s “Science Speaks”: Activist confronts the ‘father’ of drug-resistant TB
In this guest post, Abigail Mudd, medical student at Drexel University College of Medicine, interviews international TB activist Timur Abdullaev, who lives with HIV and is a two-time survivor of TB. Mudd notes, “He owes his life, he says, to treatment supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and now he also depends on the multilateral initiative for his continued health. … ‘Under-funded health systems are the mother of multidrug-resistant TB,’ he told Science Speaks, ‘lack of attention is the father.’ And while the Global Fund is the biggest international funding source for TB responses in low-income countries, as Eastern Europe economies grow, the role of the initiative is receding, leaving some national budgets to pick up the costs of first-line TB medications…” (8/2).