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Thread: Tuberculosis, Lung cancer & other lung ailments

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    Lightbulb Tuberculosis, Lung cancer & other lung ailments

    TB free by 2030...

    WHO: Tuberculosis Can Be Ended by 2030
    March 22, 2016 — In advance of World TB day (March 24), the World Health Organization is calling for collective global action and more money to support TB control strategies to end this scourge by 2030.
    The World Health Organization says ending tuberculosis by 2030, the target set by the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals will be a challenge, but it can be done. It notes 43 million peoples’ lives have been saved since 2000. WHO says countries can save the lives of the 1.5 million people who continue to die from tuberculosis every year by strengthening TB programs and adopting newer tools. Director of WHO’s Global TB Program, Mario Raviglione, says several of the 30 countries with the highest TB burden are implementing newer TB strategies with some success. One such country is India, home to more people ill with TB and multidrug-resistant TB than any other country in the world. He says the country is making progress in providing universal access to TB care for patients.

    South Africa is another country that has expanded access to a rapid molecular test for TB and drug-resistant TB. “South Africa is, let us remember, home to the largest number of people living with HIV who are receiving also TB preventive treatment. So, worldwide there are these sort of pathfinders for prophylaxis of tuberculosis, which is one of the other new elements of the new strategy that we are very much insisting on because it prevents tuberculosis and saves lives," said Raviglione. WHO cites Thailand, Russia, Brazil, and Vietnam for running successful TB control programs. The multinational health group UNITAID is working with the WHO by investing in effective approaches to end TB. For example, it is scaling up better TB treatment for children.

    Every year, an estimated one million children become ill with TB and some 140,000 die. UNITAID team leader Janet Ginnard says medicines suitable for children in the right doses and formulations now are available. She tells VOA before WHO revised its treatment guidelines, children were thought of as just little adults. She says no one recognized the need to tailor the dosage for children. “So, the drugs that we had were either child-friendly dissolvable, but not in the right doses or crushed and split pills from adult medicines to try to make up those doses - so, both sub-optimal work-around solutions," said Ginnard. Ginnard says these new child friendly medicines now can be bought on the market in doses that are right for treating tuberculosis in children.

    http://www.voanews.com/content/who-t...0/3249322.html

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    Tuberculosis is a dryness ailment. this dryness causes irritation as if it were one of those dried u rivers, with the splitting of the soil we have seen. if we were to lubricate the throat and lungs, the coughing will stop. this can be done by using tiger balm for a 'quick fix.' for prolonged effects, we could use milk powder.

    Aids is a invading disease. if we were to observe that it basically infests other native cells, we just need to get the native cells to reject the invading cells. this can be done by consuming something that will push the aids out, or, prevent it from entering. this can be done by ingesting excess nicotine, as that will identify the cell as dying, and the aids will not infect that cell. as an alternative to nicotine, we could fill the cells with some other negative things, making the aids infect the fresh 'food stuffs,' as they will be the only thing that is vibrantly alive, and, then you poop them out.
    !! Thug LIfe !!

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    It is a third world disease. It won't be gone in the 21st century.

    I was exposed to it and test positive. From my first enlistment. My immune system stopped it.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    DR-TB adds to India's tuberculosis menace...

    Drug resistance adds to India's tuberculosis menace
    23 Mar.`16 - After three years of battling tuberculosis, a disease that claimed the lives of his father and younger brother, Sonu Verma, a patient in northern India, hopes a cure for his illness may be within reach.
    "Only a few more months and my nightmare will end... it will be my rebirth, free from tuberculosis," the 25-year-old scrap dealer, who has been left visibly lean and weak by the disease, told AFP. As India marks World TB Day on Thursday, it faces an estimated 2.2 million new cases of the disease a year, more than any other country, according to the World Health Organisation. The government says it is stepping up its fight, with Health Minister J.P. Nadda earlier this week launching a new drug to help beat the growing menace of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Treating TB successfully requires patients to follow a strict, months-long drugs regimen -- or risk their disease becoming drug-resistant.


    Tuberculosis patient Sonu Verma (R), 25, seen with his wife and child at their home in Sonipat, India

    But factors such as inadequate medical facilities, lack of knowledge, poverty and social stigma mean drug resistance is a growing problem. Verma, who lives in the district of Sonipat in Haryana state, was told he had TB in 2013. A year later he was found to have multi-drug-resistant TB, after failing to complete his initial course of treatment because of a shortage of money and poor medical advice. "It was the worst time of my life," Verma told AFP. "I was always tired, I couldn't eat, couldn't work and couldn't even be close to my family."


    Tuberculosis patient Sonu Verma, 25, poses with his chest x-ray, in Sonipat, India

    Verma was tracked and counselled by volunteers from Axshya, a civil society project backed by the Indian government that works to ensure that TB patients complete their treatment. Now he is taking a new drug and doctors say his prospects are good. Despite the efforts of the national TB programme, hundreds of thousands of cases go undiagnosed each year, Dr Sarabjit Chadha, project director of Axshya, told AFP. "There are a significant number of cases who are still not coming for diagnosis and treatment," he added.


    Tuberculosis patient Anita (R), 23, seen at her home in Sonipat, India

    Kushminder Balhara, a local medical practitioner who has been practising in Sonipat for almost 15 years, said attitudes towards the disease were slowly changing. "Earlier, people used to be reluctant to say that they wanted to get tested for TB because of the social stigma," Balhara told AFP. "Now, knowing some of the TB symptoms, I refer at least two to three suspected TB cases to government facilities every month."

    https://news.yahoo.com/drug-resistan...062403758.html

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    Shorter treatment 'will help tackle' TB...

    Shorter treatment 'will help tackle' drug-resistant TB
    Thu, 12 May 2016 - New guidelines from the World Health Organization aim to speed up the treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).
    The advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) should reduce treatment to around nine months. Currently, it can take as long as two years - and many patients fail to complete what can be a burdensome course. Doctors urged countries to implement the guidelines quickly. Conventional treatment can involve thousands of pills and daily injections. Deafness is one of the main side-effects. Cure rates are as low as 50% because patients abandon treatment, leading to further problems with resistance. The WHO is also recommending a faster test for MDR-TB, which gives results within two days - compared with the current three months.


    Tuberculosis lungs x-ray

    It hailed the guidelines as a "critical step forward". Around 5% of TB cases are thought to have resistance to the two most effective drugs. This translates into 480,000 cases worldwide - and 190,000 deaths from this form of TB every year. Many patients are not being identified. The shorter treatment plan costs less than $1,000 per patient - compared with conventional treatment which costs $2,400 for the medicines alone. The International Union against TB and Lung Disease and Medecins Sans Frontieres have been involved in trials of the new treatment method in Bangladesh and nine African countries, which have influenced the WHO's decision. The Union hailed today's advice as "an historic moment".

    Cases 'driven underground'

    Its senior vice president, Dr I D Rusen, told me: "When we first saw evidence about the shorter regimen, back in 2007, it was almost too good to be true. "Then further results which were consistent were presented at our conference late last year. Next year we'll have more evidence from a head-to-head trial comparing the two treatment methods. "The shorter treatment plan uses different doses of existing drugs which were previously used for leprosy. "So we hope there will be time for production to scale up, while countries get systems in place for the new guidelines, although it's possible there could be some supply issues."

    David Lister, an MSF TB Doctor working in Uzbekistan, co-ordinated one of the studies and described the huge difference it made. He said: "The prospect of two years of TB treatment drives parents to hide their children from treatment, teenagers to abandon their ambitions and adults to decide between providing for their family or getting healthy. "The fear of relentless suffering due to side-effects manages to outweigh any hopes of cure and returning to a normal life. "But when I say, 'it's only nine months' they say, 'I can do that'."

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36271084

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    New TB initiative spots latent carriers...

    New Initiative Spotlights TB Prevention in Latent Carriers
    May 23, 2016 — UNITAID, a global health initiative, is taking the old adage “prevention is better than cure” to heart. To that end, it has just launched a new multi-million dollar initiative to finance new treatments that can prevent the onset of full-blown tuberculosis in hundreds of millions of people globally living with latent TB.
    Executive Director Lelio Marmora told VOA his organization is prepared to spend between $40 and $80 million on innovative proposals that could provide simpler, shorter and cheaper treatments for people who are at high risk of developing tuberculosis. “What we aspire [to] is to have a large menu of projects to see how these projects would work in southern Africa and in francophone West Africa, the Sahel region, probably in Asia, in Latin America. It depends,” Marmora said.


    A doctor examines a tuberculosis patient in a government TB hospital in Allahabad, India, March 24, 2014. UNITAID has just launched a new multi-million dollar initiative to finance new treatments that can prevent the onset of full-blown tuberculosis.

    Tuberculosis is a highly infectious airborne disease that kills some 1.5 million people every year. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates about one-third of the world’s population has latent tuberculosis; that is, they are carriers of the disease, but not yet infectious. About 15 percent of these asymptomatic people are expected to develop active tuberculosis. The two groups most at risk, says WHO, are children under age five and people living with HIV.

    Big step forward

    The treatment for TB is lengthy. It requires patients to take pills every day for between six and 36 months. The director of WHO’s Global TB Program, Mario Raviglione, says UNITAID’s decision to invest in preventive treatment marks a big step forward in efforts to end TB by 2030. “I think it would be a fundamental game changer because it is the first time we see a real move at this level of financing - using a financial mechanism such as this one to really move forward… This will have a huge impact in preventing the onset of tuberculosis for millions of people as well as averting deaths because once you prevent, you do not have the disease and you do not have the death, of course,” he said.


    A doctor points to an x-ray showing a pair of lungs infected with TB (tuberculosis) in Ladbroke Grove in London, England

    Raviglione added he hopes UNITAID’s financing will drive the pharmaceutical industry to develop better, cheaper, and shorter regimes for the prevention of tuberculosis.

    http://www.voanews.com/content/unita...n/3342531.html
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    World Unprepared To Cope With Emerging Infectious Diseases
    May 23, 2016 — The director-general of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, warns the world is not ready to cope with the threats posed by emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Chan told some 3,500 delegates attending the annual World Health Assembly they must work together to overcome global health threats.
    World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan told a gathering of health ministers and providers that countries could no longer work in isolation to contain infectious diseases and overcome other health threats.

    Waking an old disease

    She says few threats are local anymore. She says people and goods move around in this interconnected world and so do diseases.For example, she notes drug-resistant pathogens, including the growing number of “superbugs,” travel internationally in people, animals, and food. “The Ebola outbreak in three small countries paralyzed the world with fear and travel constraints….The rapidly evolving outbreak of Zika, Zika virus warns us that an old disease that slumbered for six decades in Africa and Asia can suddenly wake up, wake up on a new continent to cause a global health emergency.” The Zika virus is particularly dangerous to pregnant women as it is linked with brain abnormalities in newborn babies.

    Preparing for an outbreak

    Chan says outbreaks become emergencies when affected countries have weak health systems that are unprepared to deal with them. In the case of Ebola, she says the epidemic spiraled out of control in large part because the West African countries lacked the means to detect, diagnose and properly care for the patients. ​“For Zika, we are again taken by surprise, with no vaccines and no reliable and widely available diagnostic tests," Chan said. "To protect women of childbearing age, what can we do? We can only offer advice. Avoid mosquito bites.Delay pregnancy. Do not travel to areas with ongoing transmission.”


    Victoria Topay and her children pose for a family portrait at her home in West Point, Monrovia, Liberia. The empty chairs are a symbolic representation of Victoria's late husband and family members who died of the Ebola virus

    Chan says WHO’s health emergency management system is undergoing a major reform to ensure its teams are able to respond more quickly and effectively to outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies.

    http://www.voanews.com/content/world...s/3342325.html
    Last edited by waltky; 05-23-2016 at 11:13 PM.

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    Faster protocol to speed TB treatment...

    Researchers Streamline TB Testing to Speed Treatment
    May 25, 2016 | New protocol identifies more tuberculosis patients, and is easy to implement in poor rural areas worldwide. Researchers have developed a two-pronged, streamlined approach to diagnosing tuberculosis aimed at treated patients more promptly.
    Diagnosing the fatal lung disease is difficult using conventional means such as a microscope, in which the presence of the TB bacterium is easily missed in sputum samples. Instead, researchers are using the latest technology to streamline the diagnosis process. According to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis causes more deaths globally than any other infectious disease. Nearly 10 million people are diagnosed with TB each year, and the disease kills approximately 1.5 million people, mostly in low- and moderate-income countries. AIDS patients are at high risk of becoming infected with tuberculosis.


    A physician examines an X-ray picture of a tuberculosis patient.

    Experts believe many people infected with TB aren’t diagnosed until they become ill or die. “A major area of research interest for us is looking at how we can improve diagnosis to make sure that patients aren’t missed by the system,” said Priya Shete, a TB researcher at the University of California in San Francisco. “And the goal of catching those patients is to ensure not only timely diagnosis, but timely treatment initiation to try to minimize bad tuberculosis outcomes and also to prevent ... further transmission of the disease.”

    Trial program

    Shete and her colleagues led a trial program at four health centers in Uganda that aimed to catch more tuberculosis cases. A total of 822 patients suspected of being infected with TB were referred for testing. Of those, 12 percent were ultimately diagnosed with the disease. Seventy-five percent of that total was diagnosed the same day with fluorescence microscopy, a more sensitive form of testing than is conventionally done. Sputum samples of the participants who tested negative were sent to a regional laboratory for an even more sensitive analysis using GeneXpert, which identifies DNA sequences specific to TB. Those results showed that two dozen people who originally tested negative for the bacterium were infected.

    Same-day treatment was administered to the 98 patients diagnosed in the first round of testing, while antibiotics were administered six days later to a majority of the patients who were determined to have TB using the genetics test. About 20 percent of the infected patients were lost to follow-up. The bottom line, Shete says, is many more patients were identified using the two-prong approach than with the traditional testing method. “You know, at the end of the day, it meant that we got 82 percent of patients, by any means, on therapy, and I think [that shows] the feasibility of some of these types of interventions in even remote, rural settings.” Researchers now plan to repeat the testing system at 20 clinics in Uganda. Shete says future work will examine whether TB diagnosis and treatment numbers can be improved by reorganizing health centers to include a staff dedicated to fighting tuberculosis.

    http://www.voanews.com/content/resea...g/3345948.html

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    New tests for TB and counterfeit drugs...

    Experimental TB Test Gives Results in an Hour
    August 22, 2016 - A new TB test has been developed that can tell doctors within one hour whether someone has tuberculosis. The test is in the experimental stages, but scientists say it has the potential to make a big difference in developing countries hit hard by TB.
    TB is a potentially deadly disease that strikes 10 million people each year. Two million of them die of the disease, according to experts. There are antibiotics to treat TB, but it can take up to three weeks to get a diagnosis, which delays treatment. The test that is often used in resource-poor countries is the Ziehl-Neelsen, or ZN, test. Developed in the 1880s, it is an 11-step process that begins when technicians put a sample of sputum on a microscope slide, then dye and rinse it multiple times. That alone can take several hours. In addition, it is often difficult to definitively detect the presence of the bacterium under the microscope. Meanwhile, the same sputum sample may be sent away to grow the TB pathogen in a dish. But mycobacterium grows slowly, taking as many as three weeks to yield a result.

    New test, quick results

    However, an experimental TB test has the potential to show clinicians what they need to know within one hour. Carolyn Bertozzi, a biological chemist at Stanford University in California, helped develop the rapid TB sputum test, which she said fills a treatment void in developing countries, where patients often disappear before they are diagnosed. "So, it's a real public health problem to not have an accurate test that, first of all, is more specific for TB, will tell you whether the TB are alive, and can be performed in a period of time where you can keep somebody in the clinic so you can act on the diagnosis while they are still there," Bertozzi said.

    How it works

    The rapid test uses sugar molecules found in the cell walls of the TB bacteria. Investigators tag modified versions of the sugar molecule with a fluorescent dye, which the live pathogens take up and integrate into their cell walls. Under the microscope, only the live mycobacteria, which cause tuberculosis, glow green. The test also could be used to check sputum samples to see whether someone being treated for TB is responding to the antibiotics, Bertozzi said.


    A doctor examines a boy with tuberculosis at the hospital of Doctors Without Borders in Malakal, South Sudan

    There's still more work to be done before the test becomes a reality. For now, Bertozzi sees it as a way to confirm a diagnosis using a microscope for a first-pass look for the TB microorganism. "I'm excited about it because it is so simple,” she said. “It is low-tech, but it kind of fulfills a niche in technology that doesn't exist right now in the world of either TB basic science or TB diagnosis." Field trials of the experimental test began in June in South Africa. A number of charitable organizations, including the Gates Foundation, have shown an interest. The work is being presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the world's largest scientific society.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/experimenta...r/3475923.html
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    Paper-based Test Identifies Bogus and Poor Quality Drugs
    August 22, 2016 - Counterfeit and substandard medications are a serious problem in the developing world, potentially harming patients who desperately need medical treatment.
    Some of these drugs — including the antibiotics ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone — have been deemed essential by the World Health Organization for the treatment of infections. However, chemists in developing countries often do not have expensive instruments to determine whether a pill is genuine. Now, a simple paper-based test may be the answer. Instead of a $30,000 machine, a $1 paper card can test a drug in three minutes to determine whether the medication is inactive or of substandard quality. The tests come in 20-card packets.


    A team of researchers has developed a simple, inexpensive, paper-based device to test medicine for quality and authenticity.

    Chemist Marya Lieberman of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana helped develop the inexpensive test. "Really, this touches on issues of basic fairness and justice,” Lieberman said. “If people are paying for medicine, they deserve to get medicine.” Lieberman said the card can be used to test a wide variety of medications. "This card is designed to test antibiotics and tuberculosis medications, but it also works for some other drugs,” she said. “For example, for some diabetes medications and heart medications."

    How it works

    To see whether a drug is genuine, researchers crush a pill and rub the resulting powder across 12 lanes on the card. Each lane contains a test for a separate ingredient. The card is then dipped in water. Chemicals on the card react to the powder and turn a certain color, which is compared to a color pattern from high quality pills from a drug manufacturer. The process sorts out active from inactive ingredients, as well as harmful ingredients such as heavy metals.

    Sometimes medications break down if they are stored improperly in hot temperatures. In one experiment, researchers subjected the antibiotic ceftriaxone to high temperatures and then used the card to color test the ingredients. When compared to the color chromatic pattern provided by the manufacturer, scientists saw the active ingredient in the antibiotic was different from the properly stored drug. The researchers also tested antibiotics from western Kenya and Uganda, and found between 10 to 30 percent of the medications were of poor quality.

    Range of benefits

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    Dat's why Granny don't want Hillary coughin' on her - she don't wanna get the TB...

    Evidence of TB Found in People Who Are 'Cured'
    20 Sept.`16 - Researchers are perplexed following the discovery that tuberculosis may not be completely gone in those who are deemed “cured.” A recent study found evidence of the bacterium that causes TB remains in the lungs after treatment.
    A study of 99 HIV-negative individuals in Cape Town, South Africa, who had been treated for pulmonary tuberculosis with a rigorous antibiotic regimen, had their lungs imaged before during and after treatment. Investigators at Stellenbosch University used a CT scan, a more detailed form of x-ray, and PET scans that glow bright to reveal the presence of lung abnormalities. Imaging in 76 of those patients thought to be cured showed continued inflammation in the lungs and lesions similar to those of untreated patients. One year after treatment, 50 patients showed similar lung involvement, although most of the lesions had decreased in size. Sixteen patients with some abnormalities picked up in the scans were otherwise free of lesions.

    Researchers also detected genetic material in the saliva and mucus of 34 patients, an indication that live bacteria remained in their lungs. “Oh yeah, we certainly were,” said Clifton Barry describing the surprised reaction of researchers. Barry is a senior scientist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health Tuberculosis Research Section. He co-authored the study published in the journal Nature Medicine. “We were quite surprised to see the residual findings at the end of treatment... and the evidence of presence of active live bacteria in patients we called cured of tuberculosis,” Barry added.


    A physician examines an X-ray picture of a tuberculosis patient.

    Barry said investigators don’t know what the implications are, but they wonder whether such patients could relapse and, if so, whether a second infection could become resistant to antibiotics. A six-month course of antibiotics has been the gold standard in treating patients, who afterwards usually show no symptoms of TB. Said Barry, “I think the question is, “Is that really enough?” And do we need to think about potentially looking more carefully at patients at the end of treatment and evaluating in a different algorithm how we treat individual patients.”

    One-third of the world’s population is infected with tuberculosis. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 9.5 million people become sick and 1.5 million die. Not only might TB patients need to be monitored closely after treatment, researchers say the study points up that new strategies may be needed for dealing with tuberculosis. These may include doing genetics tests to determine the bacterium’s genotype, or severity and traits, so treatment regimens may be tailored to individuals infected with TB, replacing a one-size fits all approach to curing tuberculosis.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/evidence-of...d/3515485.html

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    Children's TB drug launched in Kenya...

    TB drug designed for children launched in Kenya
    Tue, 27 Sep 2016 - Kenya launches the world's first child-friendly drug, raising hopes for thousands affected by the world's deadliest infectious disease.
    The new pill is a combination of three drugs used to treat tuberculosis, mixed in the right dosage, and is fruit-flavoured to appeal to children. Until now, the global TB Alliance says pills designed for adults have been split to get the dosage for children. Every year, about a million children fall ill with TB, which is the world's deadliest infectious disease. In 2014, an estimated 140,000 children died of TB, according to global figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). Kenya is the first country to roll out the new drug nationally, with more countries expected to follow over the next three years.

    Experts say the new treatment will be more effective because the components have been measured accurately and the pill is not bitter-tasting. What is it like to live in a TB hotspot? Anne Soy, BBC Africa health correspondent: At Majengo slum in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, a dark corridor leads to Helen Chebet's one-roomed home, where she lives with her family of six. The mud-walled building, reinforced with rusty iron sheets, has very few windows and the only source of natural light in the space she rents comes from a tiny transparent panel installed in the roof. Living conditions like these, crowded and with poor ventilation, are cited as contributing factors to the transmission of tuberculosis.


    African boy stands next to medicine tray

    This year, both Ms Chebet and her two youngest children were diagnosed with tuberculosis, after several failed attempts to treat for other possible infections. Her 15-month-old daughter Chepkoech was put on a six-month course of antibiotics, which required her to take six tablets a day. Ms Chebet tried to hide the drug in the toddler's food, but her strategy did not work. "One particular drug was difficult to split and dissolve in water... I had to grind it," Ms Chebet says adding that Chepkoech could only stand the bitter-tasting drugs for the first two months.

    The new drug dissolves easily in water, making it easier to take every day for the six-month treatment period. "Caregivers can easily give up knowing how difficult it is to give children such medicine," Kenya's head of TB programmes Dr Enos Masini told the BBC. It is not only Kenya, which begins rolling out the drug for free from 1 October, where TB sufferers are expected to benefit. More than 20 countries have expressed interest in introducing the pill, says Dr Cherise Scott from the TB Alliance, the global non-governmental organisation that spearheaded the production of the new drug. "The new child-friendly pill will boost survival," Dr Scott adds. Africa has the highest prevalence of TB of any continent. The global TB death rate has dropped by almost a half between 1990 and 2015, the WHO says.

    Tuberculosis symptoms

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