This week a confidential high-level expert meeting was convened in Geneva to start work on a potential change in the country classification used by global health actors to remedy the growing problem of access to medicines in middle-income countries.

Blookmington, MN, February 20, 2015 -- Medical device company Ancon Medical Inc. has confirmed today that it has detected Tuberclosis biomarkers using its revolutionary new breath screening technology NBT-GC that makes it possible to easily find the indicators for deadly and dangerous diseases such as TB at their earliest stages. The potential benefits of the Nanoparticle Biomarker Tagging (NBT) technology are far ranging, from conducting mass screenings for contagious diseases, to identifying Lung Cancer and Tuberculosis.

New five-year activity will strengthen collaborative effort against drug-resistant TB

Liver disease and tuberculosis were common in a cohort of adult South African patients with HIV, according to data from a retrospective study. 

The issue consists of 25 articles from the world's leading experts on tuberculosis. The articles inform about the basic biology of the Mycobacterium organism, factors that regulate its virulence, how the host responds to the pathogenic challenge, and collectively how this new knowledge gives promise for potential novel interventions. Given the increasing prevalence of multidrug-resistance tuberculosis, the control of disease will be possible only through a thorough understanding of this organism and its relationship to the host immune response.

Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) are country-level multi-stakeholder partnerships, responsible for coordination and collaboration on Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) related processes in country. Therefore CCMs are important for national ownership and participatory decision-making.

23 February 2015 | Geneva - Use of the same syringe or needle to give injections to more than one person is driving the spread of a number of deadly infectious diseases worldwide. Millions of people could be protected from infections acquired through unsafe injections if all health-care programmes switched to syringes that cannot be used more than once. For these reasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) is launching a new policy on injection safety and a global campaign with support from the IKEA Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to help all countries tackle the pervasive issue of unsafe injections.

Intellectual property rights are hindering access to medicines by maintaining monopolies and high prices, according to speakers at an annual United Nations forum on human rights last week. Flexibilities enshrined in the World Trade Organization intellectual property agreement are hampered by political and economical pressure, they said, and a new system should be devised for pharmaceutical products.

Last week’s 2015 Social Forum led by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called for urgent action to facilitate access to medicines. In particular, the functioning of the intellectual property system was put into question. A number of recommendations were drawn by the secretariat after having been identified by participants.

Abstract (provisional)