The demand for, and the promise of, quick accurate tools to diagnose tuberculosis, and to discover resistance to basic TB treatments, are based on a simple and seemingly irrefutable premise. Such tools, it has been pointed out, make early and effective treatment possible, benefiting both patients and public with faster and more frequent cures, and lowering transmission.

Last week’s developments in TB treatment included the announcement that bedaquiline, the currently most promising medicine for multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, will become available to patients in 130 low- and middle-income countries through the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility. That good news for multidrug-resistant TB patients, many of whom have run out of other options, was thanks to an agreement signed by drug maker Janssen and GDF procurement agent Strichting International Dispensary Association. It will make the drug, which is marketed as Sirturo, available to national TB programs and to private providers with treatment programs approved by national programs. Bedaquiline, the first new anti-tuberculosis medicine to win U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in four decades also received approval from the European Medicines Agency the month before.

In basic numbers, this is some of what the last decade of donor awakening has totaled up to across the global health landscape:

For a decade and a half after the World Health Organization launched the expansion of directly observed treatment for tuberculosis, strides against the disease, highlighted by a nearly six-fold increase in cases documented, looked promising, an article released Thursday on PLOS ONE notes. But over the last half decade, with efforts largely reliant on “passive case finding” — that is waiting for people sick with TB to turn up at health facilities seeking care — the numbers of cases detected and acted on leveled off, leaving three million cases undiagnosed or untreated.

By the time Azmara Ashenafi’s multidrug-resistant tuberculosis was diagnosed, she had been wasting away, coughing and running fevers for three years. She had been on ineffective treatment for six months. Her three-year-old son had drug-resistant TB as well.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recognizing next week’s World TB Day with a report documenting continued progress against tuberculosis at in the United States, along with an troubling trend. The progress: the 3.0 cases per 100,000 people reported in 2013 (9,588 new cases) represents a more than 4 percent drop from 2012. The troubling part is that progress still is not shared equally: while incidence also dropped among foreign-born people in the United States, it is not dropping as fast as it is for those born in the United States. That means that the proportion of the impact of tuberculosis on people born outside of the United States is increasing, with their rate of the disease about thirteen times that of people born here. With TB elimination defined as less than one case per 100,000 people, the goal of eliminating tuberculosis in the United States remains unreached.

Letter to Cepheid cites continued cost of machines, Russia, China cartridge costs of five to six times negotiated price, and more.

A Congressional budget agreement released Monday night cuts foreign aid by $1 billion from the level set for fiscal year 2013, but prioritizes global health and humanitarian programs, according to a House Appropriations Committee release. The agreement meets President Obama’s request for Global Fund and HIV program allotments.

Corruption, staged competition, abuse of commercial secrets, and speculations over the official status prevent Ukraine from overcoming the epidemics of HIV/AIDS and TB, both of which have threatened the country’s national security.