The participants in a workshop convened last week by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Stop TB Partnership have proposed a set of goals and targets to guide the global fight against TB after 2015.

Dr Joel Keravec has come on board as GDF’s manager. Dr Keravec has 22 years of experience as a public health consultant and project manager in Latin America, Africa and Europe, for UNDP, UNESCO, and Management Sciences for Health (MSH), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PAHO and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. His technical areas of expertise include pharmaceutical management, product quality assurance and international quality standards for drugs, quality testing for laboratories, selection of essential medicines for standardized TB treatment, improved policy and regulatory environments for essential medicines and improved product management information systems.

On 29-30 January the World Health Organization (WHO) will convene an expert group meeting on the use of bedaquiline for treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

30 November 2012 - London - Last night 108 people gathered at Apothecaries Hall to launch the Sir John Crofton Fund to Fight TB. This new fund - named for the pioneering physician and professor at the University of Edinburgh who developed the "Edinburgh method" of treating TB, using a triple drug combination - will be used to fight TB in the United Kingdom and internationally. The event was organized by the United Kingdom’s national tuberculosis charity TB Alert, which will also manage the new fund.

23 November - Seoul, Republic of Korea - Some 120 experts on tuberculosis (TB) and representatives from NGOs, communities and the private sector gathered in Seoul yesterday and today for the first ever Forum of National Partnerships to Stop TB in the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions. The forum, organized by the Korean Stop TB Partnership and Stop TB Partnership Secretariat, had as its goals to share best practices, discuss common challenges and develop country-specific and regional plans of action to strengthen efforts to stop TB.

At its 22nd meeting, the Coordinating Board decided to embrace calls for greater ambition in TB and voted to endorse the Zeroes campaign. Mark Harrington (Treatment Action Group), Lucica Ditiu (Stop TB Partnership), David Mametja (South African Department of Health), Salmaan Keshavjee (Partners in Health) and Mario Raviglione (WHO) made the "zero" sign.

On 7 September, World Bank President Jim Kim posted a blog on his recent mission to South Africa: ‘A Great Day in South Africa for a Development Junkie’. In the blog he reflects on his meeting with President Zuma and his ministers and describes the importance of deeper Bank engagement in Africa, including on tuberculosis (TB).

Overcoming Tuberculosis by Paul Thorn - a book designed to help people undergoing TB treatment understand the nature of the illness and cope well with it – has been translated into Russian and adapted for the sociocultural context of Central Asia. Initially the book will be distributed in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The book is sponsored by USAID, whose staff created the translation, and the Stop TB Partnership.

An estimated one-third of TB infections in the Southern African region are linked to mining activities. 

27 July 2012 - Washington DC - Today at the closing of a special session at AIDS 2012, the International AIDS conference, award-winning actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Whoopi Goldberg made an impassioned call for urgent action on TB/HIV among children and women. "We are going to have to come to terms with this and join in making this partnership between TB and HIV dissolve. This is something we have to be dealing with now and not later," she said.