Patients, doctors and members of civil society meet with government experts to plot a course for quickly reforming South Africa’s patent laws, so that people can access the life-saving medicines they need at affordable prices.

WHO/Europe will strengthen its partnership with Romania to improve the quality and delivery of tuberculosis (TB) services, turn the tide against drug-resistant TB, and accelerate the implementation of structural health system reforms in the country. These were the main themes of a high-level visit to Romania on 13–14 October 2014 by Dr Hans Kluge, Director, Division of Health Systems and Public Health and Special Representative of the Regional Director to prevent and combat multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant (M/XDR) TB, Dr Marc Sprenger, Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and Mr Nicolas Cantau, Regional Manager of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

The four-year appointment acknowledges the role FIND plays in evaluating and introducing new TB diagnostic solutions and building laboratory capacity needed to effectively control TB.

MOSCOW, October 19 (RIA Novosti) - Colleen Daniels, Director for TB and HIV at the US-based NGO Treatment Action Group, says that stagnating investment into the treatment of tuberculosis has resulted in a great deal of unnecessary suffering, and could lead to a serious epidemic in the future.

Initiatives to support antibiotic research — of which TB drug and diagnostic R&D are crucial parts — must be backed by funding commensurate to the growing size of the epidemic.

KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation will lead 525 million dollar TB control program

The emerging crisis of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is a “personal and health system catastrophe” that’s occurring half a million times a year in the form of new cases, Eric Nuermberger said at an IDWeek session on HIV-related opportunistic diseases. Not only is it an intensively difficult disease to treat, requiring up to two years of therapy with very toxic and expensive drugs with poor efficacy, “we continue to learn it’s even worse than we may have first thought,” he said.

On 10 October, prominent speakers were invited to the Lithuanian Permanent Representation to the EU to brief Health Attachés of the different member states’ representations in Brussels on the issue of Tuberculosis and Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis in Europe. WHO Europe, the ECDC, the STOP TB Partnership, the TB Europe Coalition, the European Commission and 10 member states (France, Estonia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Belgium, Latvia and Lithuania) were present to discuss the topic and potential for future EU action. Here is a summary of the main points that were addressed:

A historic event - the First National TB Patient Symposium in Pakistan - will be held on October 23, 2014 at Hotel Margala, Islamabad.

While volunteering for the Peace Corps in Ukraine in 2010, I contracted a severe version of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Two years of painful, isolating treatment taught me the vital role social media may play in finally eradicating this disease.