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March 2011

US policymakers highlight innovation on World TB Day

March 25, 2011 -- World Tuberculosis (TB) Day was observed this week and provided a platform for experts to highlight the increasing need for new innovations and tools to fight the deadly disease. Members of the global health community and US policymakers from agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Department of State (State Department) highlighted the increasing need for new interventions to diagnose, treat, and prevent TB, and celebrated recent scientific breakthroughs.

Christy Hanson, chief of infectious disease division at USAID wrote on USAID’s “Impact” blog about the increasing need for new innovations saying, “[TB] is one area of health where innovation in diagnostics, treatment, and prevention are greatly needed. Current regimens for drug sensitive TB lasts six months….[and] due to decades of lesser-quality medication and programming that ensured patient adherence we now estimate that there are more than 400,000 cases of multi-drug resistant TB globally.”

Jeff Sturchio, president and CEO of the Global Health Council in a Huffington Post piece highlighted the need, specifically, for new drugs and vaccines to fight TB worldwide, saying, “the fight against TB also requires new drug therapies and vaccines. Organizations like the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development are innovative, nonprofit product development partnerships that are putting much needed new drugs and vaccines in the pipeline.”

Ambassador Eric Goosby, the US global AIDS coordinator, on the State Department “DipNote” blog, pointed to the success of the new World Health Organization’s Xpert MTB/RIF rapid diagnostic test and how the test can quickly and accurately diagnose TB and detect drug resistance. Ambassador Goosby praised this new innovative tool as a cost-effective measure and plans to, “support the scale up, appropriate use, and evaluation of this new technology.” The success of the Xpert MTB/RIF test provides an opportunity to build on the momentum to develop even more successful and innovative interventions to stop the spread of TB worldwide. See links below for more information.

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