Tuberculosis

“We, the people infected with drug-resistant TB (DR-TB), live in every part of the world.”

A mobile MSF TB surgery mission has successfully completed surgery on six DR-TB patients in Yeravan, Armenia.

Ukrainian prisons are a hotbed for the disease, with prevalence rates more than ten times higher than in the rest of society.

This report focuses on just some of the many factors that hamper the scaling up of DR-TB treatment—the limited availability and high cost of quality assured medicines for resistant strains of the disease, owing to an insecure market and insufficient demand; and the research questions that remain unsolved with existing medicines.

An important new TB treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration must be made available in countries with high levels of the drug-resistant form of the disease.

The approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of an important new tuberculosis treatment must lead to its availability in countries with high levels of the drug-resistant form of the deadly disease.

The Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval for bedaquiline, the first tuberculosis drug to be developed in 40 years. Bedaquiline is "a potential game changer" in treating drug-resistant tuberculosis, according to Dr. Manica Balasegaram, executive director of MSF's Access Campaign.

Data from the largest-ever multinational cohort of children infected with both TB and HIV shows urgent need for better TB tests for children.

Results from the largest multi-country implementation of a new rapid TB diagnostic test reveal a growing global crisis of drug-resistant TB.

Forty-eight-year-old Mary Marizani recently became the first MSF patient in Zimbabwe to conquer multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

Two patients being treated by MSF for tuberculosis in Tajikistan tell their stories.

MSF is adopting new strategies to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis among children and families in Tajikistan.

MSF Nurse Cindy Gibb discusses her experience in Tajikistan, where MSF has opened a new hospital ward to treat children with tuberculosis and their families.

The board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria approved a new funding model, which avoided imposing caps for countries applying for funding. In November, the board will decide on further details pertaining to the new model. 

MSF is treating migrants in Italy for neglected diseases like tuberculosis and Chagas.

MSF is convinced that the Ugandan government's focus should be on providing comprehensive, decentralized, and community-based care for TB. 

MSF calls on the stakeholders of the Global Fund to convene an emergency donor conference and to open a new early funding window to ensure that the Fund is fully functional in 2012.

This MSF illustration explores the history of TB and multidrug-resistant TB, diseases that affect millions of people worldwide.

This MSF illustration explains the effects of TB and multidrug-resistant TB, diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. 

Alarming new data suggest that the global scope of MDR-TB is much more vast than previously estimated, requiring a concerted international effort to combat this deadlier form of the disease 

MSF is expanding activities in three prisons in Phnom Penh to include basic primary health care in addition to tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS screening and treatment. 

Tens of thousands of people living with HIV and tuberculosis  in Myanmar are unable to access lifesaving antiretroviral therapy, a dire situation exacerbated by the recent cancellation of a new round of funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.

A new MSF report warns that cancellation of global fund grants will have devastating effect in Myanmar.

While international attention focuses on Myanmar, a health crisis in the country looms large. An estimated 85,000 people infected with HIV in Myanmar are not receiving lifesaving treatment. 

MSF nurse Alice Echumbe describes her experiences as supervisor at MSF's Jamaa Letu family health center.

As the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria marks its tenth anniversary, people living with HIV/AIDS and those delivering treatment took to the streets in response to drastic funding shortfalls.

People living in tribal villages in central India are caught up in the conflict between Maoist rebels and government forces. Dr. Rebecca Cuthbert describes how MSF takes the clinics to them.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is scaling up its tuberculosis (TB) support in the Cambodian province of Kampong Cham while continuing to help shape the nation’s national TB program.

MSF has released a list of important stories that had an impact on people’s ability to access needed drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines in developing countries in 2011.

Through its Access Campaign, MSF has been closely following the developments in the world of access to medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics.

"The system seems to have broken down completely. It is hugely dysfunctional at every level."

The cancelation of Round 11 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria undermines the significant progress that has been made in the uphill battles against these deadly diseases.

MSF International President Dr. Unni Karunakara discusses the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria's decision not to accept grant applications this year to support treatment programs due to a catastrophic drop in donor funding. 

MSF responds to the unprecedented decision taken to cancel a funding round of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

An MSF outreach counselor in southern Myanmar travels village to village as part of the effort to treat HIV/AIDS and HIV-TB co-infection in the country.

In early June, world leaders and global health officials gathered at the United Nations for a summit meeting on HIV/AIDS. Among the outcomes was a new treatment target, a plan to get 15 million people living with HIV/AIDS on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment by the year 2015.

The financial transaction tax due to be discussed at this week's G20 Summit could help save millions of lives if a portion of it were put toward global health.

The financial transaction tax proposed by France and Germany could help save millions of lives if a percentage were allocated to global health, MSF said today.

Dr. Grania Brigden, the advisor on tuberculosis with MSF’s Access Campaign, describes how children with TB that could be treated often go without care because of a lack of effective diagnostic tools and approaches. 

Every day, Senzo wakes up and walks to catch a bus to the clinic for his daily injection. The injection is part of the complicated two-year-long treatment for his drug-resistant form of TB.

Busiwe Beko who lives in Khayelitsha, South Africa, describes her baby daughter’s successful battle with drug-resistant TB.

An interview with Hussein Sheikh Qassim is the Medical Activities Manager in the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Marere, southern Somalia.

From Sarah Boseley's Global Health Blog: Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is on on the rise and hard to cure. Médecins Sans Frontières wants people with the disease to blog about it, to find out what they really need.

Real stories of people living with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Today's feature from Swaziland: "I do get a lot of emotional support from my family, but financially we are struggling."

A promising new test will finally help detect more people with drug-resistant tuberculosis, a development that lends greater urgency to solve major problems surrounding the pricing and supply of DR-TB medicines

Dr Andrei Slavuckij, who has been following the evolution of TB in the former Soviet Union for the past dozen years, discusses the dynamics of the disease in a post-Soviet landscape.

In Kampong Cham, a small MSF team is working to improve TB care in the provincial hospital and fill gaps in a national system that is struggling to manage the region's high TB burden.

Dr. Francis Varaine, an MSF TB expert, discusses the potential impact of this new test, which greatly improves the detection of drug-resistant TB

The World Health Organization estimates that 8,700 people in Uzbekistan are stricken with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis—or MDR–TB—each year. Patients with MDR–TB must endure an even longer, even more painful treatment regimen than the already tedious process patients with drug–responsive TB go through. Due to high costs and the complexity of diagnostics and treatment, most countries with a high TB burden struggle to treat those who need it.

Even a quick glance at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) updates from Somalia over the past two years shows that the country’s conflict remains as relentless as ever. February 25, 2009: “121 wounded in 24 hours”; June 2, 2009: “218 treated over two weeks”; January 20, 2010: “111 wounded in 3-day period”: February 3, 2010: 89 treated, including 66 women and children, in Mogadishu.

Through its Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, MSF has been closely following the developments in the world of access to medicines, vaccines and diagnostics.

MSF's project pilot involved a range of activities that included improving infrastructure in five regional health facilities, providing a back-up supply of essential drugs and supplies, distributing basic first aid kits, and more.

"Eneza Ujumbe: The Voices of Mathare Youth" is a newsletter written by and produced by young people living with HIV in Mathare, a slum on the edge of Nairobi. MSF runs a clinic in Mathare called the Blue House, which provides healthcare to thousands of people. 

The dual epidemic of tuberculosis and HIV is devastating Swaziland, cutting life expectancy there from 60 to just 31 years of age, MSF said today in a new report.

New York, September 28, 2010 – Country contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM)—to be announced at next week’s donor replenishment meeting in New York—are expected to fall far short of the $20 billion needed for the Fund to maintain and expand its grant programs.

"Health indicators in Somalia have been known to be, for many years already, some of the worst in the world and TB is not an exception."

On June 5, MSF opened new TB departments in two of its health centers in the Middle Shabelle region of Somalia. The departments will provide free quality TB services, including testing, treatment, and health education to the communities living in the surrounding areas of Mahaday and Gololey.

After ten years of providing integrated healthcare for people living with HIV/AIDS in Busia, MSF is ready to hand over the program.

"They asked, ‘why are you coughing so much? You must be a serious case. Soon you will probably not be with us anymore.’ ”

By the time Lindo was three years old, she had developed a constant cough and breathing problems and was too weak to walk

One out of three prisoners with tuberculosis is released before the completion of treatment and faces enormous obstacles once outside the penitentiary system.

Lay counselors are an intergral part of MSF's TB and HIV programs in Lesotho, and each has a story to tell.

The beautiful, mountainous landscape is visible through the windows, but the patients here are all in serious condition, suffering from tuberculosis (TB), the leading cause of death of people living with HIV in Lesotho.

At one time, TB was considered on its way to being eradicated. However, the disease started a frightening comeback beginning in the 1980s and lasting through the present day.

The World Health Organization estimates that one million children each year develop TB, the vast majority of whom live in resource-poor settings.

Berlin/Ashgabat, December 17, 2009 - The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has closed its medical activities in Turkmenistan after ten years of working in the Central Asian country.

No doubt strides have been made in giving more people access to anti-retroviral drugs. But will the progress continue? Jim Clancy put that question to Emi Maclean, Director of the Doctors Without Borders Access Campaign.

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is on the rise worldwide and kills around 120,000 each year. The treatment of MDR-TB is very time-consuming and has prohibitively negative side effects. Many patients have difficulties remaining in treatment for up to two years and must at the same time endure the social stigma that comes with being infected by the deadly disease.

“I understand what other patients are going through because, after all, I am also a patient. I take a minimum of 15 pills each day just to fight against drug-resistant TB."

MSF doctor Hermann Reuter works in a tuberculosis (TB) project in a rural district of Swaziland called Shiselweni.

Swaziland in Southern Africa is on the brink of a major health crisis due to the killer twin epidemic of HIV-AIDS and TB.

Nikiwe, 30 years old, was diagnosed in early 2009 with drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Here, he talks about the daily struggle of being infected and the shame he feels living with his illness in a fearful community.

Stockholm, October 21, 2009 – The largest European countries are lagging far behind the United States in funding of tuberculosis (TB) research and development. As such they bear a responsibility for the painfully slow progress in finding new TB tests and treatments, according to a report released today by the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The report shows that all European countries in the analysis—with the exception of Sweden-- have failed to prioritize TB and are contributing to huge global underfunding at a time when 1.7 million people die every year from the disease.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is starting the process of gradually handing over its tuberculosis (TB) program in Chechnya.

Busisiwe Beko, a gregarious community health worker for MSF, set out on foot into Khayelitsha, a vast township of 500,000 people in South Africa, to hunt for one particular ailing young woman.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has announced the closure of HIV/AIDS-treatment projects in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova unrecognized by the international community.

On World TB Day this year, MSF focusses on the urgent need for TB tests to deliver faster and accurate results, for all patients, even in the remotest settings. Patients from Kenya, India and Georgia tell their stories of how TB tests today are failing them.

On March 17-18, 2009, MSF brought together a number of doctors, lab workers, community activists and test developers to answer this question. MSF Access Campaign Director Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer talks us through what is needed in a new TB test and explains why we can’t settle for anything less.

Amsterdam/Chisinau, February 24, 2009 — Today, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) called on the Moldovan and Transnistrian authorities as well as the international donor community to pay more attention to the health needs of the population of Transnistria.

After attempting for almost two years to reach an agreement with China’s tuberculosis (TB) control program, MSF has given up on its efforts to start a project in Inner-Mongolia for assisting people suffering from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

In Zugdidi, Georgia, nine patients suffering from resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) have completed their treatment after two years of adhering to a daily drug regimen. Jocelyne Madrilène, MSF head of mission in Zugdidi, explains why these recoveries are satisfying for the patients and the entire medical staff.

Every year, tuberculosis (TB) kills about 1.7 million people and 9 million develop active disease. TB is on the rise in countries with high HIV rates, particularly in southern Africa, which has the highest rates of HIV. Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death for people living with HIV/AIDS, and in the past 15 years, new TB cases have tripled in countries with high HIV prevalence. People living with HIV/AIDS are up to 50 times more likely to develop active TB in a given year compared with HIV-negative individuals, and roughly a third of the 33 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide are infected with latent TB. Yet, in 2006 less than one percent of people living with HIV/AIDS were screened for TB.

Every day the medical teams of Médecins Sans Frontières come up against the obstacle of inadequate or ineffective tools needed to treat, detect or prevent disease – especially those diseases that predominantly occur in poor countries, such as tuberculosis, malaria or other neglected infectious diseases.

In Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and Gori, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) program manager Filipe Ribero has conducted several evaluations at sites where displaced persons are living. In the field, Ribero reports, there is a sharp contrast between a massive influx of international aid and the limited opportunities—for now—to provide assistance.

Dr Eric Goemaere, medical co-ordinator for MSF in South Africa, discusses diagnosing and managing HIV-TB co-infection.

Dr. Peter Saranchuk was the medical coordinator at MSF’s HIV/AIDS project in Lesotho. Here, he explains the reasons behind the dangerous relationship between TB and HIV.

For 21 years, the south of Sudan was the country’s hotbed of conflict, until a peace agreement was signed in 2005. However, the emergency is far from over.

Dr. Francis Varaine is coordinator of MSF’s tuberculosis working group. In this interview, he underlines the urgency of identifying new diagnostic means and treatments suited to MSF’s operating environment. He also discusses MSF's priorities for 2008.

New York, December 20, 2007 — People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

This symposium aims to discuss how to improve current practices with the tools that exist today and to explore the implementation of emerging technologies and applications. Participants will also be invited to analyse the roadblocks holding up the development and implementation of improved TB/MDR-TB testing and contribute to developing strategies for challenging stakeholders to overcome these obstacles and put an end to the global neglect of these issues.

Johannesburg, November 6, 2007 — Drug developers can speed up the development of urgently needed new tuberculosis drugs by adopting a different strategy, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) joins international experts in stating today. According to a report published today in the open-source medical journal PLoS Medicine, mimicking the approach used to test AIDS drugs would accelerate the research process, and get drugs to patients who most need them, faster.

MSF began treating MDR-TB in Kenya in May of 2006. With four patients enrolled at "Blue House" and three on the shores of Lake Victoria in a town called Homa Bay, MSF remains the only provider of MDR-TB treatment in the country today. Around Nairobi alone, it is estimated there are about 50 cases, but there is no capacity to absorb them.

In Karakalpakstan, a semi-autonomous region of Uzbekistan, MSF has been running a project treating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) since 2003. MDR-TB is a debilitating disease and requires lengthy treatment with a complex combination of toxic drugs, which often have appalling side effects.

New York, March 22, 2007 – The international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today released statistics showing that even under optimized conditions, treatment will succeed in barely more than half of patients with multi-drug resistant (MDR) Tuberculosis (TB). As insufficient research and development on new drugs and diagnostics has left health staff without the right tools to treat the disease, some patients will go on to develop extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB regardless of the quality of care they are offered. The situation is particularly alarming when treating people co-infected with TB and HIV.

New York, January 12, 2007— Proposals to accelerate the development of tuberculosis (TB) drugs were outlined today at the conclusion of a two-day symposium titled "No Time to Wait," convened in New York this week by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontires (MSF) with the support of Howard P. Milstein and Weill Cornell Medical College's Abby and Howard P. Milstein Program in Chemical Biology. The symposium brought together more than 100 TB specialists, drug developers and regulators, policy makers, donors and activists to outline practical proposals to fill the gaps in TB drug research and development (R&D).

New York, January 9, 2007 — The staggering human toll taken by tuberculosis and malnutrition as well as the devastation caused by wars in the Central African Republic (CAR), Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are among the "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006, according to the year-end list released today by the international humanitarian medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The ninth annual list also highlights the lack of media attention paid to the plight of people affected by the consequences of conflict in Haiti, Somalia, Colombia, Chechnya, and central India.

New York/Paris/Geneva, October 30, 2006 — Relying on the standard World Health Organization (WHO) TB strategies in the face of extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) will be fatal, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned today. To respond to the XDR-TB outbreak, WHO will need to get newer drugs to patients as soon as possible by ensuring accelerated development of new drugs already in clinical trials. Existing TB drugs and diagnostics are not adequate to combat the disease, and a new analysis being released by MSF as the 37th Union World Conference on Lung Health begins this week in Paris shows that none of the TB drugs currently in development, however promising, will be able to drastically improve TB treatment in the near future. WHO must take the lead in ensuring there is major reprioritisation and increased funding of TB research.

With approximately 9 million people developing active tuberculosis (TB) every year and 1.7 million deaths annually, TB is far from under control. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection dramatically increases the risk of developing active tuberculosis and is driving the TB epidemic in Africa.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains the leading cause of death from a curable infectious disease, despite the availability of short-course therapy that can be both inexpensive and effective.

With tuberculosis (TB) killing 1.7 million people and newly infecting nine million each year, this curable disease is far from being curbed. The HIV/AIDS pandemic exacerbates TB's scourge through co-infection, as does the increasing emergence of drug-resistant TB. The standard TB treatment available today is long and complex. It relies on drugs developed over forty years ago and takes six months for patients to complete, and the last four decades have brought nothing in the way of improvement.

Adrien Marteau is a doctor in the MSF tuberculosis (TB) treatment program at Gluprish Hospital in Abkhazia, located within the borders of Georgia in the Caucasus region. He shares his frustrations as a doctor treating drug-resistant forms of this illness.

It is Brazilian nurse Gabriela Adao's fourth mission with MSF. At Island Hospital, Gabriela is developing alternative adherence tools to make sure that tuberculosis (TB) patients actually take their drugs properly, and ultimately recover.

Each year, TB silently kills about two million people, almost exclusively in developing countries. Among the anonymous victims of the disease, children are literally excluded from international efforts against TB, even though they represent more than 20 percent of the affected population.

MSF has supported the local branch of the national TB program in Abkhazia since 1996. Since 2001, the program has included treatment for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), one of the most frightening health scourges of former Soviet countries.

Head of MSF's tuberculosis unit, Dr. Francis Varaine, describes the difficulties involved in treating a disease that kills two million people each year. Current methods for diagnosing and treating the disease are outdated and not fully adapted to children, people co-infected with HIV, or those with multidrug-resistant forms of the disease.

The very costly and complex treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is only accessible to a very small minority among the millions of people affected by the disease worldwide.

"The Afar nomads were neither receiving quality TB treatment in the local health system, nor were they welcomed there, as they are a marginalized group with a different language and culture," says Dr. John Pratt, a Welsh general practitioner working at the Galaha TB center.

By Martha Bedelu

Geneva/New York, Tuesday March 22, 2005 – Without a simple, rapid test for detecting tuberculosis (TB), care providers in developing countries will continue to miss about half of all the people who need tuberculosis treatment. Efforts to control TB globally will be undermined, said the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been confronted with tuberculosis since its first day of operation more than 30 years ago. In the past few years, MSF has expanded TB treatment to include patients in a growing number of projects, and the focus has shifted from disease control to patient care.

Paris/New York, October 26, 2004 - On the eve of the 35th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Paris organized by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD), the humanitarian medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns that millions of individuals in developing countries continue to die from this curable disease and that a radical change is needed in the way TB is tackled globally.

New Delhi/New York, March 24, 2004 (World TB Day) - The international humanitarian medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today said that we are losing the battle against tuberculosis (TB) because we rely on archaic diagnostic tests and drugs. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has magnified this problem as TB often coincides with, and is made harder to treat by, HIV/AIDS. MSF calls for an urgent increase in worldwide investment in TB research and development.

Transcript of Press Teleconference Hosted by the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development.

On the occasion of the second Board of Directors meeting of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), scheduled to take place in New York City, April 23-24, 2002.