Sorfequiline shows stronger action than existing treatments against illness that killed 1.23 million last year
A new treatment for tuberculosis could boost cure rates and shorten the time needed to treat the disease by months, trial results suggest.
Globally, an estimated 10.7 million people fell ill with TB last year and 1.23 million died from it.
Continue reading...Advocates fear that other donors will follow Britain’s reduction to the Global Fund for Aids, TB and malaria
The UK is undermining its legacy in fighting infectious diseases including Aids and malaria by cutting money pledged to a leading global health fund, campaigners claim.
The 15% reduction in the contribution to the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced this week – in a year when the UK, alongside South Africa, is co-host of the fund’s replenishment drive – risks encouraging other countries to cut back commitments as well, advocates fear.
The Gates Foundation is a major private contributor to the Global Fund. The foundation also contributes to theguardian.org, which funds independent journalism at the Guardian
Continue reading...Gains in cutting deaths from tuberculosis at risk as health officials warn clinics forced to ration drugs and testing
Malawi is facing a critical shortage of tuberculosis drugs, with health officials warning that stocks will run out by the end of September.
It comes just months after the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that the country had successfully reduced tuberculosis (TB) cases by 40% over the past decade.
Continue reading...Resurgence could be on horizon as outbreaks pick up speed in US and abroad amid public health program cuts
As tuberculosis outbreaks pick up speed in the US and abroad amid deep cuts in funding for local, state and international public health programs, a resurgence of the deadliest infectious disease – including drug-resistant tuberculosis – could be on the horizon.
Increasing funding for public health responses could end tuberculosis (TB) altogether, says James Brookes, an IT specialist from Idaho, who told this to his representatives in Congress on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Department of health reports ‘rapid number of cases in a short amount of time’ and says that there could be more
Kansas is facing an unprecedented outbreak of tuberculosis, one that has been labeled the largest of its kind on record in the US.
According to the Kansas state department of health and environment, as of 24 January, there had been 67 active tuberculosis cases since 2024 and an additional 79 latent or non-active infections. The infections – all since 2024 – were reported in Wyandotte and Johnson counties, which are part of the greater Kansas City area.
Continue reading...Study warns region’s exponential rise in incarceration is fuelling the disease, with cases increasing by 19% between 2015 and 2022
High incarceration rates in Latin America – the region with the world’s fastest-growing prison population – are exacerbating tuberculosis in a region that is bucking the global trend for falling incidents of the disease, experts have warned.
A study published in The Lancet Public Health journal has estimated that, contrary to previous assumptions, HIV/Aids is not the primary risk factor for tuberculosis in the region – as it remains in Africa, for example – but rather imprisonments.
Continue reading...Competition watchdog probes claims of profiteering by US drugmaker in country where tuberculosis is biggest killer
South Africa’s Competition Commission will investigate the American drugmaker Johnson & Johnson for the high price it has been charging for the tuberculosis medicine bedaquiline, as well as for extending its 20-year patent until 2027 to block cheaper generics from entering the country.
The commission’s investigation was made public last week by the health department and the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) legal organisation at a media briefing of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The commission investigates matters when it has reasonable suspicion of exploitative or unethical behaviour.
This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Readers can sign up here for the centre’s newsletter
Continue reading...Large-scale field trials that provided healthy food packages to sufferers and their families showed radical reductions in fatalities
Infectious, deadly and long associated with poverty, tuberculosis causes weight loss, while poor diets increase the likelihood of developing the disease. Now, a study in India has found that improved nutrition can cut the risk of death by 60% and reduce the chances of infection within families by about 40%.
India has the highest burden of TB and TB deaths globally and has launched an ambitious plan to reduce incidence and death rates by 80% and 90% respectively by 2025.
Continue reading...India’s patent office turns down bedaquiline extension to Johnson & Johnson, clearing the way for generic versions
People with drug-resistant tuberculosis in India could soon have access to critical medication at a far lower cost after the authorities rejected US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson’s application to extend a patent.
The firm wanted to extend its patent on bedaquiline, which expires in July, until 2027, which would have prevented cheaper generic versions reaching the market.
Continue reading...Officials in Nunavut say there are 31 cases of active tuberculosis in the hamlet of Pangnirtung, a community of 1,500
A tuberculosis outbreak in the Canadian Arctic has prompted frustration in a remote Inuit community and highlighted the persistence of an illness that has largely been wiped out in the rest of the country.
The outbreak also lays bare the dismal living conditions and overcrowding in many Arctic communities, despite Canada’s status as one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Continue reading...Global Fund urges UK and other donors to pledge billions to get efforts to end diseases by 2030 ‘back on track’ after catastrophic impact of Covid
Britain is being urged to pledge billions of dollars to get the fight against malaria, tuberculosis and Aids “back on track” after efforts were ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The UK has historically been one of the main donors to the Global Fund, an international financing organisation aimed at ending the three deadly epidemics by 2030. Now it is warning that, unless donors make an unprecedented total funding pledge of $18bn (£13.25bn) this year, that goal will be missed.
Continue reading...For the first time in a decade deaths from TB are rising, with the curable disease killing 20,000 Kenyans last year. Now testing ‘ATMs’ and other innovations are helping to find ‘missing cases’
One day in May last year, Violet Chemesunte, a community health volunteer in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, got a call from a colleague worried about a woman she had visited who kept coughing.
She asked if Chemesunte could go round and convince the 37-year-old woman, a single mother to three young children, to seek medical help. She suspected tuberculosis (TB), and feared it might already be too late.
Continue reading...Tuberculosis campaigners tell G20 leaders $1bn is needed annually for vaccine research to reverse decades of underfunding
A group of tuberculosis survivors are calling for more funding and action to find new vaccines, after the numbers dying of the infection rose for the first time in 10 years.
In 2020, 1.5 million were killed by TB and 10 million infected, according to the World Health Organization. Campaigners want world leaders to invest $1bn (£730m) every year into vaccine research, spurred on by the momentum from the Covid jab development.
Continue reading...New stations at health clinics improve hygiene in locations where warm water seen as ‘an absolute luxury’, helping to tackle Covid
In Eswatini, the southern African country which lost a prime minister to Covid-19 in December and where most people have no access to hot water, handwashing – a key weapon in the fight against the pandemic – has been a problem.
No government health clinic in the kingdom, formerly known as Swaziland, had hot running water for patients. Nine out of 10 didn’t have hot water for operations and cleaning instruments.
Continue reading...Number of people diagnosed and treated in worst-affected countries has fallen to 2008 levels as resources diverted
Twelve months of Covid-19 has reversed 12 years of global progress against tuberculosis, worse than previously estimated.
The pandemic has resulted in nearly a 25% decrease in diagnosis and treatment around the world, according to research published on Thursday by a coalition working to end TB.
Continue reading...Data from tens of thousands of people around the world used to identify those at highest risk of active TB before they get sick
Scientists have developed a new tool to predict the chances of a person developing tuberculosis, which could help limit the spread of the disease and improve the life chances of millions of people .
Researchers at University College London (UCL) said they believe they have produced an algorithm that could help eliminate the disease in some countries.
Continue reading...Scientists prepare to examine sewage in attempt to try to find the source of a Covid-19 infection that killed Nathan Turner
Passengers on the ill-fated Ruby Princess cruise ship have been sent another warning from the New South Wales health department, that they could have been exposed to tuberculosis.
The Ruby Princess voyage that arrived in Sydney on 19 March is responsible for about 10% of all coronavirus infections in Australia, and the bungled management of the outbreak has sparked two separate inquiries.
Continue reading...With attention focused on coronavirus, undiagnosed and untreated TB cases will cause 1.4 million to die, research suggests
The head of a global partnership to end tuberculosis (TB) said she is “sickened” by research that revealed millions more people are expected to contract the disease as a result of Covid-19 restrictions.
Up to 6.3 million more people are predicted to develop TB between now and 2025 and 1.4 million more people are expected to die as cases go undiagnosed and untreated during lockdown. This will set back global efforts to end TB by five to eight years.
Continue reading...As Covid-19 creeps across the region, fears mount over how it will unfold. Will a young population help stem the spread of disease, or will it unleash catastrophe on creaking health systems?
Just seven weeks after Africa recorded its first case of Covid-19 – an Italian national in Algeria – the virus is creeping across the continent, infecting more than 10,000 people and causing 487 deaths. Three of the region’s 54 countries – São Tome and Principe, Comoros, and Lesotho – remain apparently virus-free.
“Case numbers are increasing exponentially in the African region,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa. “It took 16 days from the first confirmed case in the region to reach 100 cases. It took a further 10 days to reach the first thousand. Three days after this, there were 2,000 cases, and two days later we were at 3,000.”
Continue reading...Easy to catch but hard to diagnose, TB is almost as deadly today as it was 150 years ago. Better, cheaper drugs are a priority
Tuberculosis has killed more people than any other disease in history. Last year, 1.5 million people died from TB and 10 million more acquired it. A shocking one-quarter of the world’s population is infected. That’s not much better than 1993, when one-third of the world was infected and the World Health Organization declared TB a global emergency. We are losing the battle.
Earlier this month, experts gathered in Hyderabad for the 50th Union World Conference on fighting the disease. When the first such gathering was held in 1867, TB was the leading cause of death in industrialised nations. Today, it still ranks in the top 10 worldwide. Why, despite all the progress in medicine and public health over the past 150 years, is TB still the most common and lethal of all infectious diseases?
Continue reading...