TB Alert

Old Disease – New Threat is a report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB (APPG) that sets out recommendations for steps the UK government should take to address drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) in the UK and globally. The APPG received oral and written evidence from key TB stakeholders – including the Health Protection […]

TB Alert supporter, Simon Richardson, features in an article in the US edition of Men’s Health magazine that examines epidemiologists at the front line of efforts to prevent global pandemics of infectious diseases. Scientific advances, such as DNA fingerprinting, are reported to have made it possible to identify the virus or bacteria responsible for disease […]

The President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim a former health activist, has warned that pulling 1.2 billion people out of extreme poverty in a generation – though possible – will prove a tougher challenge than tackling AIDS. In a keynote speech he identified growth as the driver of poverty reduction, but stressed the […]

European MEP, Claudiu Ciprian Tanasescu , has called for EU and worldwide action on the growing threat of TB and drug-resistant TB in the European Parliament’s newsletter. He writes, in the EU the fight against TB costs €15m per week and €750m per year in medical costs and leads to the death of seven people […]

The Financial Times has issued its annual special report on tuberculosis, in time for World TB Day 2013, featuring articles on: the impact of austerity on funding for TB; how tuberculosis has failed to capture imaginations in the same way as HIV; the arduous route from drug pipeline to patient; mineworker mobility and TB in […]

The Guardian reports on the roll out of GeneXpert, a rapid testing machine designed to speed up diagnosis of tuberculosis, across Mozambique. The cartridge based machine has been trialled in hospitals in Maputo and Tete with the intention of speeding diagnosis for TB – particularly to identify drug-resistant forms of the illness – from two […]

The Guardian reports that the drug pipeline for TB is the best it has ever been, with 10 drugs in clinical testing. Delamanid is currently undergoing review by the European Medicines Agency. This follows closely on the heels of the US Food and Drug Administration approval of bedaquiline in late 2012, the first dedicated new […]

TB Alert in association with the Health Protection Agency and Royal College of GPs, have launched a new suite of resources to raise awareness of TB among primary care professionals. The suite includes online TB training for primary care clinicians and a TB resource pack for TB Specialist Nurses. The primary care awareness materials are […]

EXPOSED is a four-part series of short films that tell the story of the deadly global epidemic of tuberculosis. The series focuses on current efforts to halt this airborne disease, which is growing more difficult to address, as well as the urgent movement to develop new tools to prevent it. By telling the stories of […]

The TB world calls for redoubling of efforts for a TB vaccine, after disappointing results from first TB vaccine efficacy study in a century. Results of a first-of-its-kind clinical trial of a novel TB vaccine has demonstrated that the candidate was safe and well tolerated, but that it did not confer efficacy in prevention of […]