TB/HIV Working Group

TB/HIV Working Group Secretariat

Joint TB/HIV & MDR-TB Newsletter October Update 2009

"The consequences of inattention to TB research are not just embarrassing, they are tragic and shameful," said Dr Tony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at a meeting held in Cape Town just prior to IAS2009. "Generations of research advances and technologies have bypassed the field of TB research. All of the great breakthroughs that we have seen in molecular biology - there was nobody working on it in TB. Nine million people develop active TB each year and yet we still don’t have an effective vaccine. There have been no newly licensed drugs for TB in forty years [with the exception of rifabutin]. The therapeutic regimens, although they work, are cumbersome and prone to the development of drug resistance. The diagnostics are ridiculous, they are antiquated, non-standardised and imprecise."

HATIP described earlier this year (http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1284892.pdf), that TB research has long been neglected and under funded. But the participation of Dr Fauci, Nobel Prize winner Dr Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur, and many others from the HIV research establishment was a clear sign that some of the world’s pre-eminent research institutions are finally moving to make TB research a priority.

TB/HIV at IAS 2009: Catalysing HIV/TB Research: innovation, funding and networking

The World Health Organization and the TB/HIV Working Group of the Stop TB Partnership in collaboration with the Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic (CREATE), International AIDS Society, Treatment Action Group and the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre of University of Cape Town organized a highly visible meeting in conjunction with the 5th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Cape Town, South Africa on July 18-19, 2009. The meeting was attended by about 250 HIV researchers, activists and representatives from funding agencies. The meeting focused on critical TB/HIV issues in the areas of TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment, childhood TB and drug resistant TB. New and previously unreported data was shared, discussed and research priorities were defined. The research priority discussions during the meeting also informed the ongoing revision of the TB/HIV research priorities document by the World Health Organisation, which will soon be finalised. Presentations from the meeting are available at here. The outcome and key findings of the meeting were communicated to the IAS conference delegates through a satellite symposium on July 21, 2009. Webcast of the satellite symposium is available at http://www.ias2009.org/pag/webcasts/?sessionid=2449