Sunday, 30 September 2012

POVERTY: Senior Tory accuses EU of "squandering" Britain's aid budget


A senior Government minister has accused the European Union of squandering Britain’s international aid budget on schemes that often have nothing to do with alleviating world poverty.

Alan Duncan has accused the EU of
Alan Duncan has accused the EU of "squandering" Britain's international aid budget. Photo: Justin Sutcliffe
Alan Duncan, the minister of state for aid, said the Department for International Development (DfID) was “forced to give” British taxpayers’ money to the EU and was powerless over how it was spent.
The charge will raise tensions within the Conservative party because it touches on two of the areas where the Tory Right is most concerned about David Cameron’s policies - foreign aid and Europe.
Brussels insists it does not “impose” its choice of aid projects on Britain but - in an escalation of hostilities - a senior Conservative separately accused the EU of lying. “If you want an EU lie, this is a classic one,” said the senior Tory. “It is a 100 per cent lie. We have been arguing with the EU whenever we can that the money should have a poverty focus.”
At next week’s party conference in Birmingham, Justine Greening, the new International Development Secretary, will face calls from the party grassroots to clamp down on wasteful spending and projects which are not squarely aimed at tackling poverty.
An investigation into overseas aid by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed how £1.4 billion, one-sixth of DfID’s budget, is diverted to the EU for its own schemes - many of them in relatively wealthy countries that the UK no longer believes should receive aid.
Among the findings are:
* £800,000 out of the EU aid budget is being spent on a water park being built in Morocco by the French owners of Center Parcs
* Iceland has received £20 million from an EU fund subsidised by British aid. The funding is to prepare Iceland for EU membership - even though two-thirds of the country no longer wish to join
* a former Lancashire detective turned DfID consultant was given £223,683 for fighting corruption in Jamaica, one of eight consultants paid more than £100,000 for their work
* DfID said a review had now been ordered into spending on 'independent experts’ whose contracts had been agreed with the previous, Labour government
Mr Duncan told The Sunday Telegraph that the moment had now been reached to review the EU’s aid programme. He said: “We share the people’s anger on this. We are forced to give money to the European Union.
“We ask them to focus aid on poverty but they don’t, and we have no choice in the matter.”
Mr Duncan said he hoped the process would be considered as part of the Government’s wider review of EU competencies and conduct, which will see a cross-Whitehall audit and the publication of around 20 reports to determine what powers Britain can repatriate from Brussels.
Since the coalition came to power in 2010 it has stuck to the pledge, made by Mr Cameron in opposition, that spending on foreign aid should increase until it reaches the UN-recommended level of 0.7 per cent of gross national income - amounting to £10.8 billion in the next financial year.
DfID’s budget has been ringfenced and protected from public spending cuts - the only department apart from Health to be spared austerity measures in this way. Some Conservative MPs have called for aid spending to lose its protection, while others have criticised particular aid projects as wasteful.
A review of DfID spending concluded last year that its money should be refocused on the poorest nations. Following its findings, the department reduced the number of countries receiving bilateral aid from 43 to 27.
The Sunday Telegraph last week investigated two projects that are receiving money via the EU and which are listed on the website of EuropeAid, the organisation that manages a large part of the EU’s aid budget.
A £60 million tourist complex - called L’Oasis de Noria - on the outskirts of Marrakech in Morocco is being given more than €1 million, about £800,000, by EuropeAid for energy efficiency schemes being deployed in its construction. The project, which includes a water lagoon, 480 apartments, tennis courts, spa, restaurants and shops for foreign tourists, is owned in a joint venture by Compagnie Generale Immobiliere, Morocco’s largest construction company, and Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs, the French company that runs Center Parcs on the Continent.
When it opens in 2014, the resort will boast solar water heaters, waste heat recovery systems, insulated walls and roofs and double glazed windows.
A hotel in Larache in northern Morocco is receiving a further £650,000 for a similar energy efficiency scheme. The EU, despite being asked four days ago, has been unable to confirm to The Sunday Telegraph the name of the hotel.
In all, Morocco, which Britain considers too wealthy to receive bilateral aid, is given about £120 million a year out of the EuropeAid budget - with about £18 million of that contributed through DfID.
The EU spokesman insisted yesterday that it was wrong to claim the UK government had no say in EU aid spending - which has a wider remit than DfID’s - but also pointed out that from next year there will be a greater focus on the poorest countries.
A spokesman said it was “simply untrue” to suggest that “Brussels is taking decisions on where funding goes and then imposing them on the UK”.
The spokesman explained that Morocco comes under its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which is funded from within the EU’s aid budget, so that “cooperation with this country is much wider than just fighting poverty”.
The money paid to L’Oasis de Noria, said the spokesman, was not funding the tourism industry but reducing the environmental impact of a large resort, which will “benefit the local public, visitors, and, indirectly, the EU economy and environment”.
Without the money from EuropeAid, the energy saving measures would not have been introduced, added the spokesman.
But Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP, said: “It seems perverse for the EU to be using its aid budget to be subsidising a resort for Europeans in Morocco. It seems that poor and low-income Britons are paying higher taxes to subsidise the holidays of middle-class Europeans to holiday in the sun. That is bizarre.”
In Iceland, EU money has gone towards promoting tourism and development in the Katla geopark, around the volcano Eyjafjallajökull , which erupted in 2010 causing widespread disruption to worldwide air travel.
Steingerdur Hreinsdottir, who administers the geopark grant on behalf of the Development Centre of South Iceland, said: “If it’s available anyway, I don’t see why we shouldn’t take it to help a region that’s in decline.” Iceland is officially wealthier than the UK.
A DfID spokesman said a series of contracts were now under review after The Sunday Telegraph revealed the large sums being earned by so-called 'poverty barons’ working as aid consultants.
The biggest single payee was Justin Felice, a former detective superintendent with Lancashire police, who now works as an anti-corruption co-ordinator for the Jamaican police. He was given £223,683 in 2009/10, the last year for which figures are available. The sum is £20,000 more than the salary earned by DfID’s own permanent secretary, its top civil servant.

Saturday, 29 September 2012

POVERTY: How 1st world maternity used to be


Maternity

28 SEP, 2012
Maternity: a film of Queen Charlotte’s Hospital is one of the gems of Wellcome Library’s film collection. This semi-professional film captures many historically interesting aspects of antenatal and postnatal care in the 1930s, before the inception of the National Health Service in 1948.
At the time, both infant and maternal mortality was a concern: the film outlines some of the risks in pregnancy such as labour complications and puerperal sepsis also known as childbed fever, which is astreptoccoci bacteria infection. The film presents Queen Charlotte’s hospital, London, as a centre for excellence in the teaching of nurses and staff and the treatment of pregnant women.
It is not clear who the intended audience of the film was. A film made in the same year, Centenary of the Royal Hospital Sheffield, 1932, chooses a much more formal approach to its subject; looking at a day in the life of the hospital. Maternity is more informal in approach and contains elements of both comedy and tragedy.
The film was made by an organisation, Personal Films, with no other credits in its filmography. It could be fictitious; the film not sponsored officially by the institution and the audience may have been completely internal to the hospital. Other films of this type often satirise the ‘official’ view of the organisation (see Radcliffe ructions: a drama of (un)real life, which is a spoof in the style of a 1920s comedy melodrama). In contrast, a companion film,  His majesty the baby, 193?, relating to Queen Charlotte’s hospital, has a clearer objective. That film features a well-known actress of the time, Jessie Matthews, appealing for funds for the hospital. It too starts in a light-hearted way, through the eyes of a couple about to have a baby, but then goes on to appeal for money to increase the number of beds for maternal care.
Technically, Maternity is relatively sophisticated for an amateur film in terms of the number of sequences edited together; it uses a number of locations outside the hospital as well as medium and close-ups to enliven the story of the hospital’s activities. The film also uses a number of cinematic devices and embeds itself in the language of cinematic melodrama: it starts with a brief scene of a romantic couple getting engaged on a park bench, then, somewhat coyly, a mare and her foal and then a sheep and lamb are shown.
The intertitles tell us “we begin where most films end”. A new mother and her baby becomes the narrative starting point for the film to show all the resources deployed in reaching this happy eventuality. Delightful footage of the district nurses is also shown; they mobilise post-haste on their bicycles. Reaching a dingy tenement building with a number of small children outside, they decide that this is an emergency and one goes to a public phone box and calls for a doctor. Dr Jones from Harley Street is summoned and arrives in a magnificent motorcar of the period with his driver with lots of children looking on.
Sometimes mothers are advised to have their babies in hospital and the film then goes into some detail to show how mothers-to-be are welcomed. A sequence then reveals the ‘Labour ward through the patients eyes’. There are point-of-view shots from the bed with anaesthetic equipment at hand. A masked nurse and doctor lean over and the picture goes out of focus; the image is polarised before it goes completely black (to simulate unconsciousness). Next, the new mother is seen holding her baby in bed. However, there are also bleak shots of gravestones together with a clock pendulum swinging, referring to the reality of childbirth ­– ‘no unmarried mother is refused’ and ‘In Britain every two hours a woman dies in childbirth’.
Some of the most interesting footage featured in the film is of the female ‘almoner’ (a social worker, assessing the circumstances of mothers-to-be) before the mother is booked into hospital. Antenatal care is shown; blood pressure is tested and an examination takes place. At the end, there is a scene where nurses and doctors are shown being trained. Instruction on babycare is given using a life-like doll; the trainee nurse drops the ‘baby’ and the doll is shown sprawled out flat on the floor. The film ends.
Unsurprisingly, this film has proved popular with television documentary makers. Most recently, a television series in two parts by Available Light Production in association with BBC Bristol Timeshift, has made extensive use of the Wellcome Film resource. In the first programme, Health before the NHS: The Road to Recovery, narrated by Sir Robert Winston and broadcast just this week, the following films from the collection featured:

MALNUTRITION: KENYA: Irrigation catches on



Just 1.7 percent of Kenya's arable land is irrigated
KILIFI, 28 September 2012 (IRIN) - After years of devastating crop failures due to drought and erratic rainfall, smallholders in Kenya - who comprise the bulk of the country’s farmers - are increasingly taking up irrigation to boost their yields.

In the largely semi-arid coastal district of Kilifi, a group of over 1,000 small-scale farmers have formed an association through which they pool money, approximately US$4 each, for the purchase of irrigation equipment like pedal pumps, watering cans and water pipes.

“We realized by pulling our resources together, our members would be able to afford irrigation tools which they can’t on their own. Now when we get good produce, our members use their extra income to boost their farm inputs,” Jotham Keya, the coordinator of the organization, told IRIN.

Vitalis Penda, 37, told IRIN that the switch from relying on rain to water his crops to irrigating his field has already paid dividends. In just two years, he has managed to turn two hectares of unpromising, parched land into a thriving farm of vegetables and beans. 

“I used to get nothing from this farm when I used to wait for the rain. Now when you look at it, you see the vegetables and the beans are very green and healthy because I irrigate it. Before, I used to get at most four bags of beans. Last season, after irrigation, I got 12 bags,” Penda, told IRIN.

“People don’t feed me anymore; I give them food,” he added.

In central Kenya, farmers along seasonal rivers are using solar-powered water pumps as a cheap and environmentally friendly way to irrigate their farms.

“The innovation by farmers is a clear demonstration [that] they want something that would get them out of perennial food insecurity. They want support to produce more,” James Samo, agricultural production specialist at the Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN.

Ninety percent of food consumed in Kenya is produced by smallholder farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture estimates.

Public and private partnerships

The government says it, too, is promoting irrigation to boost the country’s food security. It has launched a 10,000-hectare irrigation project in the north-western Turkana region, which is expected to improve food security and livelihoods in an area long characterized by drought, conflict and high poverty levels.

“Through public-private partnerships, an increasing number of farmers, especially in rural areas, are getting irrigation equipment at subsidized prices, which has seen the number of those irrigating their farms rise over time,” Wilson Songa, agriculture secretary, told IRIN.

The number of smallholders practicing irrigation has increased from 400,000 to an estimated 700,000 over the past two years, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The National Irrigation Board, which is responsible for large-scale government-run irrigation schemes, has recently added to its mandate the provision of technical advice to small-scale farmers.

Global trend 

Farmers in Asia and Africa are increasingly taking up small-scale irrigation to increase yields, according to a recent study by the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute.

“With food security back on the international agricultural agenda, and climate change increasing the uncertainty of rainfall, it is an opportune time to reconsider investments related to irrigated agriculture,” the report says. 

Yet Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture says just 1.7 percent of the country’s arable land is irrigated, while the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates it has 300,000 hectares with irrigation potential. 

Experts told IRIN that more must be done if small-scale irrigation initiatives are to make a difference. “For small-scale irrigation to pick up to levels where it can create impact, farmers must be trained on how to do it and be able to access the equipment at affordable prices,” James Samo ,an agricultural production analyst with the government, said.

Discretion urged

Experts say the viability and sustainability of irrigation projects, big or small, will depend on the capacity of farmers to use water resources sustainably.

“As irrigation schemes pick up, water, which is a critical component in all this, needs to be used in a sustainable way. Farmers need training on how to conserve water through innovation, like the use of polythene-covered water holes,” Enoch Mwani, agricultural economist at the University of Nairobi, said.

For Rodney Lunduka, sustainable markets specialist at International Institute for Environment and Development, irrigation projects must be implemented prudently.

“Irrigation is not [viable] for the whole country. In other areas like the dry land, irrigation has lower potential, and other forms of production are more viable and sustainable, e.g., livestock production,” he said. 

“Imposing irrigation in such arid areas only brings conflict, which result in even huger loses of property and life.”

ko/rz
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MALARIA: VIETNAM: Migrants and malaria



A rubber tree plantation worker in the Central Highlands
HANOI, 28 September 2012 (IRIN) - Lack of funding to monitor migrant patterns in Vietnam risks worsening the spread of drug-resistant malaria, health experts said on the sidelines of a World Health Organization (WHO) annual regional meeting in Hanoi which closed on 28 September. 

Resistance to the anti-malaria drug artemisinin can spread due to widespread migration across borders and internally within Vietnam, said John Ehrenberg, director of Combating Communicable Diseases in WHO’s regional office in Manila. 

Reports of drug resistance - when an artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) takes longer to treat infections - have been recorded along the Thailand-Myanmar border, in Myanmar and in southern Vietnam. Studies showing drug resistance along the Thai- Cambodian border date back to 2005. 

Eva Christophel, team leader in malaria at WHO’s office in Manila, said while Vietnam has promoted ACTs and improved surveillance and detection of suspected infections, its migrant communities must be studied more closely to prevent the spread of drug resistance. 

Between 2000 and 2011 reported deaths by malaria fell from 148 to 14, while confirmed cases fell from over 74,000 to just over 16,500, according to the National Institute of Malaria Parasitology and Entomology in Hanoi. 

Migrant populations have to be monitored to control the resurgence of malaria as well as new cases of drug resistance, said Nguyen Manh Hung, the director-general of the institute. 

“With uncontrolled movement of seasonal workers, especially those for forest exploitation and other forest-based activities, it’s difficult to contact them for malaria control,” he said. 

Much of Vietnam's forest-based activity is in the country’s Central Highlands, where migrants, mostly from the Mekong Delta, make a living from logging and fuel the country's lucrative wood-processing industry. 

Migrants make up some 25 percent of the country’s largest cities, based on government figures reported to the International Organization of Migration

“Special programmes” needed 
“Currently Vietnam does not have enough money available to do what has to be done to address the artemisinin-resistance issue,” said WHO’s Christophel. “You need to have special programmes. A bednet is only given to people who register [with authorities]. If you are not registered then how are you going to get your bednet,” she said, referring to workers in the informal sector. 

Vietnam receives most of its funding to combat malaria from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Since 2004 Vietnam has received more than US$40 million in grants to combat the disease from the fund. 

To fight malaria, farm owners need to distribute insecticide treated bednets to migrant workers they employ, she said. It is also important to equip workers in forested areas with tests, drugs and bednets, as well as train peer health workers on malaria diagnosis and treatment. 

Mosquitoes infected with malaria-infested parasites in Vietnam are mostly found in forest areas. In 2008 forests covered almost 39 percent of the country, or some 13 million hectares

“You need do some surveys, you need to get additional supplies because these people are moving; the more they move the more supplies they need, and you need to train people,” Christophel added. 

Studies published in April 2012 of 3,200 patients along the northwestern border of Thailand near Myanmar from 2001 to 2010 indicated a steady increase in drug resistance from 0.6 percent of surveyed patients to 20 percent after a decade. 

mb/pt/cb 

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MALARIA: Rwanda: Fighting Cross-Border Malaria


William Brieger


Date:Sat, Sep 29, 2012 4:12 am

By Evaline Namuwaya, 29 September 2012

Rwanda and her neighbouring countries have agreed to develop a cross border strategy to control the spread of malaria and its elimination in the region.
Cross border infections could be hindering achieving malaria elimination from the regional countries
This was one of the recommendations made at the just-concluded Rwanda Malaria Forum held in Kigali.
According to reports, cross border infections could be hindering achieving malaria elimination from the regional countries.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, Rwanda's ten border districts have a higher prevalence of the disease compared to the rest, thereby hampering the progress made in combating the disease.
The forum also agreed to ensure that 90 per cent of the population at risk of malaria will have access to locally appropriate vector control interventions based on evidence.
It was also agreed that there will be gradual strengthening of surveillance through investigation and classification in all low endemic districts  .....
http://allafrica.com/stories/201209290143.html

POVERTY: Lack of jobs slows migration to African cities


Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:15 GMT

Source: Alertnet // Laurie Goering
Displaced civilians from Walikale arrive at Magunga III camp outside of the eastern Congolese city of Goma on July 23, 2012. REUTERS/Alissa Everett.
By Laurie Goering
LONDON (AlertNet) - A shortage of job opportunities has slowed migration from rural to urban areas in many parts of Africa over the last two decades, and has even reversed it in a few cases, an expert on African demography says.
But African cities will continue to grow, experts predict, because fertility rates among city dwellers are not declining as much as expected - one reason Africa’s population is set to more than double by 2050.
Contrary to expectations, countries like Ivory Coast, Mali, Zambia and Central African Republic have seen periods in the last 20 years when more city dwellers have moved to rural areas than vice versa, said Deborah Potts, a Kings College London demographer who looks at urbanisation trends in sub-Saharan Africa.
In many parts of the region, “you have tremendous counter-movements out of the cities back to rural areas… because people are finding it really hard to find livelihoods that will sustain them in the cities,” she said during a presentation at the Chatham House think tank in London.
This outwards migration has slowed the expected rate of population growth in some African cities such as Lagos, Potts said. That could have important implications for urban planners and for national preparations to deal with climate change.
The lack of jobs in African cities may also challenge widely held assumptions that rural families hit by increasingly extreme weather will be able to adapt by moving to cities or sending family members to work there.
Farmers affected by worsening droughts may move to towns or cities, Potts said, but “there are no livelihood activities for them and if there are no such activities, they will just be refugees. That’s a different kind of urbanisation.”
In fact, faced with food shortages and weather disasters like flooding, African city dwellers may actually move - temporarily or permanently - to rural areas to try to cope, said Deborah Sporton, an Africa expert and human geography lecturer at Britain’s University of Sheffield.
In Africa, rural and urban areas “are very much connected”, she added.
RURAL FOR DECADES?
According to U.N. estimates, Africa’s population is expected to double by 2050, from 1.1 billion people today to 2.3 billion. That projection is based in part on fertility rates falling from an average of 5.1 children per woman to 3 children per woman.
But that expected decline - based on predictions of increasing urbanisation in Africa and evidence from Asia that many urban dwellers want smaller families - “is completely uncertain”, Sporton said.
Better education for women, reductions in child mortality and higher incomes have driven falling birth rates in many parts of the world, particularly in towns and cities. But urban Africa, with its shortage of jobs and persistently high rates of child and maternal mortality, has not seen the declines expected.
Today in Africa, “most urban population growth comes from natural increase in the cities and not from migration. This comes as a surprise to most people,” Potts said.
 Asia – not Africa – remains the world’s fastest urbanising region, she said, noting that Africa “may remain primarily rural for decades”, in part because of a lack of employment opportunities in cities.
The African cities that have been growing most quickly are mainly those like Luanda in Angola or Port Harcourt in Nigeria which have benefited from resource booms in commodities such as oil, timber and gold, Potts said. Other fast-growing cities – including several in northern Uganda - have absorbed refugees from conflicts in neighbouring countries.
Recent Chinese investment in African roads, ports and railways has created construction jobs, but most are temporary and unable to support urban families in the long run, Potts added.
Since 2005, birth rate declines have slowed dramatically in some African countries and halted entirely in others, Sporton said. Today, women in Niger, Somalia, Burundi, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Uganda and Burkina Faso can expect to deliver at least six children on average, a birth rate matched in the rest of the world only by Afghanistan.
“We’re not seeing fertility decline as expected (in Africa). What we are seeing is some of the highest fertility rates in the world,” Sporton said.

Friday, 28 September 2012

TUBERCULOSIS: STOP TB NEWS



September 2012



TOP LINE NEWS

Response by Dr Lucica Ditiu, The Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership and Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Stop TB Department.

Plans to use historical allocations as a basis for future funding are met with a strong reaction from the TB community.

The Declaration on TB in the Mining Sector was signed at the Summit Meeting of the Southern African Development Community Heads of State and Government.

A reduction in global funding to Eastern European and Central Asian countries is threatening to reverse achievements made against TB, advocates say.

The declaration, created by activists, researchers, policy makers and others working on TB, calls for zero TB deaths, zero TB infections and zero TB suffering.

Update from GDF on an interim change in leadership, the provision of second-line drugs, partial procurement and other issues.

A donor agreement will significantly reduce the cost of the rapid TB diagnostic test Xpert MTB/RIF in 145 high-burden and developing countries.

TB PEOPLE

Following a visit to South Africa, Jim Kim reflects on his meeting with President Zuma and the importance of World Bank engagement in Africa, including on TB.

A campaign featuring Bulgam Bhai, a superhero character that fights TB, has won an award at India’s EMVIES media awards.

South Africa is an ideal environment for TB vaccine trials, according to the head of the South Africa Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative’s clinical trials programme.

Cathy Jamieson, a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB, travelled to AIDS 2012 to participate in a high-level workshop on TB and HIV.

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS

Lung health experts and advocates will gather in Kuala Lumpur in November to discuss challenges and opportunities in the fight against lung disease.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB is calling for written evidence to inform a report on drug-resistant TB.

Vijana Amani Pamoja continued its Kick N Test TB screening campaign with a fourth annual soccer tournament in Jericho township.

Aeras and the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) have started the first clinical trial of IDRI’s TB vaccine candidate ID93 + GLA-SE.

The United States Agency for International Development has delivered four Xpert MTB/RIF diagnostic machines to the Government of Kazakhstan.

UK charity Target TB has launched a three-year strategy with plans to expand its work in Africa and Asia and raise the profile of TB as a global emergency.

Vietnam’s National TB Programme, in collaboration with PATH and the Central Council of Vietnam’s Young Pioneers, has launched a national painting contest.

The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development and Sanofi have agreed to collaborate on research to accelerate the development of new TB drugs.

The WHO Kenya Office, in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute has launched a new course on the management of TB.

PUBLICATIONS

The authors of a PLOS Medicine article cover the systematic reviews that contributed to the development of the International Roadmap for TB Research.

New England Journal of Medicine article examines the recent history of TB policy with a view to explaining the current response to drug-resistant TB.

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.

PLOS Medicine article covers the opportunities and barriers to using point-of-care diagnostics in tackling diseases of global health importance.

The World Medical Association, a partner of the Lilly MDR-TB Partnership, has made a MDR-TB training course available on line in Chinese.

TB CARE I has published guidelines on how to measure the prevalence of active TB disease among health care workers in order to prevent the transmission of TB.

STOP TB NEWS
September 2012



TOP LINE NEWS

Response by Dr Lucica Ditiu, The Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership and Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Stop TB Department.

Plans to use historical allocations as a basis for future funding are met with a strong reaction from the TB community.

The Declaration on TB in the Mining Sector was signed at the Summit Meeting of the Southern African Development Community Heads of State and Government.

A reduction in global funding to Eastern European and Central Asian countries is threatening to reverse achievements made against TB, advocates say.

The declaration, created by activists, researchers, policy makers and others working on TB, calls for zero TB deaths, zero TB infections and zero TB suffering.

Update from GDF on an interim change in leadership, the provision of second-line drugs, partial procurement and other issues.

A donor agreement will significantly reduce the cost of the rapid TB diagnostic test Xpert MTB/RIF in 145 high-burden and developing countries.

TB PEOPLE

Following a visit to South Africa, Jim Kim reflects on his meeting with President Zuma and the importance of World Bank engagement in Africa, including on TB.

A campaign featuring Bulgam Bhai, a superhero character that fights TB, has won an award at India’s EMVIES media awards.

South Africa is an ideal environment for TB vaccine trials, according to the head of the South Africa Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative’s clinical trials programme.

Cathy Jamieson, a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB, travelled to AIDS 2012 to participate in a high-level workshop on TB and HIV.

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS

Lung health experts and advocates will gather in Kuala Lumpur in November to discuss challenges and opportunities in the fight against lung disease.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB is calling for written evidence to inform a report on drug-resistant TB.

Vijana Amani Pamoja continued its Kick N Test TB screening campaign with a fourth annual soccer tournament in Jericho township.

Aeras and the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) have started the first clinical trial of IDRI’s TB vaccine candidate ID93 + GLA-SE.

The United States Agency for International Development has delivered four Xpert MTB/RIF diagnostic machines to the Government of Kazakhstan.

UK charity Target TB has launched a three-year strategy with plans to expand its work in Africa and Asia and raise the profile of TB as a global emergency.

Vietnam’s National TB Programme, in collaboration with PATH and the Central Council of Vietnam’s Young Pioneers, has launched a national painting contest.

The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development and Sanofi have agreed to collaborate on research to accelerate the development of new TB drugs.

The WHO Kenya Office, in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute has launched a new course on the management of TB.

PUBLICATIONS

The authors of a PLOS Medicine article cover the systematic reviews that contributed to the development of the International Roadmap for TB Research.

New England Journal of Medicine article examines the recent history of TB policy with a view to explaining the current response to drug-resistant TB.

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.

PLOS Medicine article covers the opportunities and barriers to using point-of-care diagnostics in tackling diseases of global health importance.

The World Medical Association, a partner of the Lilly MDR-TB Partnership, has made a MDR-TB training course available on line in Chinese.

TB CARE I has published guidelines on how to measure the prevalence of active TB disease among health care workers in order to prevent the transmission of TB.