It has been heralded as an important step in ending the threat of tuberculosis in the United States, and one with ramifications for countries with higher incidence of the disease: a new drug to treat TB infection before it causes illness, treat it more quickly than current regimens. With standard treatment consisting of daily pills for six to nine months, findings from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded trial that the addition of the drug rifapentine could shorten treatment to 12 once-weekly doses bettered the odds that more patients with latent tuberculosis could complete treatment that would rid them of TB bacteria.

As President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief in-country teams build HIV-fighting strategies in the future, they will seek, report on, and provide written responses to input from groups representing those most affected by HIV, following a State Department cable sent to embassies around the world earlier this month and released Monday.

If enacted, the President’s budget would slash U.S. global TB funding to its lowest level since 2009.

Drops in donor spending on global health in 2011 were not as steep as expected and were part of a shift, that while reflecting the impact of the global economic crisis, also indicated recognition of the need to support health and health systems worldwide.

While donor funding for global health rose steeply in the last decade, “the era of rapid growth has come to an end,” this analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation says. It tracks spending on basic health care, health workforce, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, nutrition, and other needs during the first decade of this century, and finds year to year increases reached their height in 2007, and have declined each year since.

“Our worst enemy is success. We don’t handle success well. We handle crisis well.”

While the immediate causes of tuberculosis drug shortages in United States differ from the causes of drug shortages in resource poor settings where disease burdens are higher, the origins and consequences end up being similar.

Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby will head the new Office of Global Health Diplomacy at the State Department, while retaining, at least for the immediate future, control over the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, the program he has headed for the last three years. The Global Health Diplomacy office was announced last July as the successor to President Obama’s Global Health Initiative. GHI, a response to neglected and preventable health threats in poor countries, was launched in 2009 and originally planned as a 6-year effort.

Dr. Lucica Ditiu, executive secretary of the Stop TB Partnership, began her career with the World Health Organization as a medical officer for TB in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia working with all institutions involved in TB care, including ministers of health and justice. She directly supported civil society and communities, funding their efforts through a grant from the European Commission for Humanitarian Assistance. In 2006 she was selected to be a medical officer in the TB unit of the European Regional Office in Copenhagen. Dr Ditiu joined the Stop TB Partnership Secretariat in Geneva to lead the TB REACH initiative, whose goal is to improve access to TB treatment.

Makers of an investigational tuberculosis drug that has been urged for “compassionate use” approval in South Africa have applied to the European Medicines Agency to market the medicine as part of a combination therapy for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.