tuberculosis

Last week, my colleagues Erin, Margaret and I (that’s us in the lab coats) went on a tour of the Aeras Global TB Vaccine facility in Rockville, Maryland. We were there to learn more about the need for a new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine and to see how the vaccine development process works.

If you remember back in March, when we met with global leaders in The Hague, the Global Fund released some impressive reports detailing their work to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Now, just a few months later, they’ve released new data, and the results are astounding:

It’s challenging to work on tuberculosis. Even though TB still kills almost 2 million people each year, not enough is spent to stop it, and few grasp the urgent need for new vaccines. Yet, last week we got gratifying news when the United Kingdom announced its first-ever grant to my organization for TB vaccine development.

With World Tuberculosis Day this week, TakePart.com has an interesting story about rats trained to detect tuberculosis.
They write:

The WHO just released its 2010 report on multidrug and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (M/XDR-TB) surveillance and response, providing the latest information on the status of this global epidemic.