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News/Event Item
The Urgent Need to Stop TB: Increasing Diagnostic Testing and Developing New Diagnostic Tools
Jan. 22, 2008
Washington, D.C.
A Congressional Briefing
One-third of the world’s people carry the bacillus that causes tuberculosis, which kills over 1.6 million people each year. Co-infection with HIV/AIDS and the rise of drug-resistant strains of TB make this ancient killer a serious global threat today. As headlines in recent months have highlighted, extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) affects the United States and has been detected in 40 other countries to date. Effectively treating drug-resistant TB requires that diagnostic tools are available to properly and quickly identify the bacteria. This is true everywhere but is even more urgent in the developing world where laboratories and health care systems are often inadequate.
TB is the leading killer of people infected with HIV in resource-poor countries. Incorrect or slow diagnosis may enable a person infected with TB to inadvertently spread it to others, many of whom may also be infected with HIV or another disease that compromises their ability to fight TB. Improving the diagnostic capabilities of developing countries and creating new diagnostic tools appropriate for resource-poor settings is essential to reducing the burden of disease in developing countries.
The Global Health Council, Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics held a panel discussion with leaders in the effort to stop TB and in developing new TB diagnostics to identify this deadly disease more accurately and more quickly.
Featured Speakers:
Moderator:
Nicole Bates, Director of Government Relations, Global Health Council
category: Global Health Council News : General Health News
contributed by Liza Nanni on 8 January 2008
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