TUBERCULOSIS: Recent history of treatment initiatives

Dr. Douglas was president of the Vaccine Division at Merck & Co. for most of the 1990s. His wife, Ann, was a PP55 board member for six years, and in 1996 she was enthusiastic about Ralph Nader ’55’s proposal to involve Project 55 in a campaign against tuberculosis.
“She came home and told me about it,” Douglas told an interviewer years later, “and I said, ‘He’s nuts! This is a crazy idea – there’s no way! This is an enormous world health problem. We don’t have the capability of going out and handing out pills or giving vaccines to millions of people. It’s not what we can do.’”
Nevertheless, PP55 hosted a conference entitled, “Tuberculosis: A Global Emergency” at the Woodrow Wilson School on a cold, rainy Sunday in February 1997. “We wanted to vet this idea with some experts,” Douglas said. Two dozen TB control organizations sent representatives. An audience of 150 or so showed up too. “And,” Douglas recalled, “the meeting demonstrated, as Ralph had thought, that advocacy for tuberculosis was an important issue and by itself would accomplish a lot.” Before long the Tuberculosis Initiative – soon abbreviated to “TBI” – was officially in business, and Gordon Douglas became its program leader.
Later that year, PP55 was a convener at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, of a symposium of world-class experts with an even more ambitious title: “The Global Tuberculosis Pandemic: A Strategy for Unified Global Control and Ultimate Elimination.” PP55 then went on to become a founding member of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development.
“When we started,” Douglas said long afterward, “there was really nothing being done on tuberculosis. If you asked a private citizen they’d say, ‘Well, we thought tuberculosis was cured years ago.’ But the true issue is that worldwide it’s as big a killer as AIDS. It’s an enormous problem, and the things that have helped solve it here are not working in the developing world.”
http://blog.project55.org/2010/05/13/the-tuberculosis-initiative-a-catalytic-role-for-princeton-project-55/