World TB Day, March 24, marks the day in 1882 when German microbiologist Robert Koch announced his discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). Despite the considerable progress made since that discovery, TB remains one of the world's deadliest diseases. In 2013, an estimated 9 million people became ill with TB, and 1.5 million people died, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This airborne disease is a leading killer of women and children worldwide. TB co-infection is the major cause of death among HIV-infected people killing roughly 1 in 4 who are co-infected. The growing problems of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB further intensify the TB crisis.

WHO's theme for World TB Day 2015, Reach, Treat, Cure Everyone, highlights the continued need to effectively diagnose, treat, and cure those afflicted with the disease — many of whom live in the world's poorest, most vulnerable communities. NIAID remains committed in its broad research efforts to gain a better understanding of the disease and to find new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent TB.

Through innovative approaches, such as mathematical modeling and genome mapping of complex biological structures, scientists are developing a greater understanding of how Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) causes disease, as well as the various stages of Mtb infection and TB disease. With NIAID's support, scientists have sequenced the genomes of approximately 2,000 Mtb strains to gain a deeper knowledge of the bacterium's genetic diversity and patterns of drug resistance — information that will contribute to the development of new diagnostics and other rapid tests for identifying patients with MDR-TB and XDR-TB.

New diagnostics and indicators, or markers, of disease to identify patients who harbor TB bacteria but do not have symptoms is a key research focus. In this regard, NIAID recently expanded its Tuberculosis Research Units program, which integrates epidemiology, immunology and microbiology to focus on TB latency and persistence and their connection to active TB disease. Additionally, the NIAID-supported TB Clinical Diagnostic Research Consortium is evaluating several investigational diagnostics and their impact on TB management in endemic countries. NIAID supports the development of the WHO-endorsed GeneXpert MTB/RIF TB diagnostic test, which detects Mtb and drug resistance in sputum samples within two hours. Development efforts are aimed at increasing the sensitivity of Mtb detection, expanding the drug resistance markers to detect XDR-TB, as well as using non-sputum samples to facilitate diagnosis of TB in children.

Finding new TB treatments is also a major research focus at NIH. Adherence to current therapy can be difficult given that regimens require daily medications for at least six months and potentially up to two years. Moreover, with the growing threats of MDR-TB and XDR-TB, effective new medicines to overcome drug resistance are critically needed. NIAID support has contributed to more than two-thirds of the roughly 20 investigational TB drugs and drug combinations currently in clinical testing. Additionally, NIAID scientists working as part of an innovative, collaborative public-private partnership helped to identify 3,200 promising compounds for further development. In 2014, NIAID scientists and other researchers helped to identify a new type of TB treatment, called host-directed therapy, which involves manipulating the body's response to TB bacteria rather than targeting the bacteria itself.

Controlling TB infection ultimately depends on effective prevention strategies, including a vaccine. NIAID supports basic and preclinical research on new candidate TB vaccines to prevent infection or disease, as well as to help shorten the duration of TB drug treatment regimens. Several candidate vaccines have demonstrated protective effects in animal models and are now being tested in humans. Through its HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks, NIAID also evaluates preventive TB treatments for people infected with HIV.

Last year, WHO announced the goal of completely eliminating TB by 2050. NIAID remains committed to supporting and conducting the necessary research and leveraging resources with other funding agencies and organizations to reach that target. Although the challenges ahead are daunting, our resolve to end the plague of this ancient disease is steady. With continued scientific progress, we look forward to the day when World TB Day becomes a thing of the past.

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., is the director of NIAID. Richard Hafner, M.D., is chief of the TB Clinical Research Branch in the NIAID Division of AIDS; Christine F. Sizemore, Ph.D., is chief of the Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases Section in the NIAID Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

NIAID conducts and supports research — at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide — to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available at http://www.niaid.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

source: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/mar2015/niaid-24.htm

A 2010 graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham has been selected by the World Health Organization to a six-person committee tasked with evaluating the global response to the Ebola epidemic.

Dr. Faisal Shuaib received his degree from the School of Public Health's international health program and was recently commissioned by WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan to be part of the team that will lead WHO's Ebola strategy.

"It is an honor to be part of this prestigious assembly of experts commissioned to do this important piece of work," Shuaib said. "The panel's report will hopefully add to the growing body of knowledge on how we can do a better job of confronting disease-causing agents that have proved to be tenacious, efficient and unforgiving."

Shuaib is currently the incident manager and head of the National Ebola Emergency Operations Center in Nigeria, where he played a major role in containing and ultimately dispelling the virus outbreak.

The first case of Ebola in Nigeria came into Lagos state by flight on July 20 when an ill traveler arrived from Liberia, according to UAB. During the course of the disease, Shuaib said the country recorded 19 confirmed cases, but within a month the country reported no more cases and the WHO declared Nigeria Ebola-free on Nov. 7, 2014.

As part of the WHO team, Shuaib will be monitoring other West African countries and submit a report to the 68th World Health Assembly in May.
"We still maintain a focus on the Ebola outbreak in other West African countries," Shuaib said. "We continue to conduct active surveillance, perform screenings at our ports, and continually increase awareness about this disease."

source: http://www.bizjournals.com/

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is issuing a call to action for countries around the world to create an international response system for future outbreaks, which he said would address the "global failure" to combat Ebola.

As the death toll for Ebola continues to rise, Gates is urging governments and international organizations like the United Nations and NATO to seize the momentum and adopt a new global health strategy.

Gates laid out a blueprint for the global response system Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. His plan focuses on creating a central international institution and building up the basic health systems in poor countries – an ambitious and costly plan that he says would take years of work.

"As the Ebola epidemic fades from the world's attention, we risk missing the opportunity to learn from it," Gates wrote. "There is a significant chance that an epidemic of a substantially more infectious disease will occur sometime in the next 20 years."

A central part of the strategy is a "global institution" to coordinate all outbreak-related efforts. This body would must be "given enough authority and funding to be effective," Gates wrote.

That organization would assume many the roles of the United Nations' health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO), which has faced heavy criticism for its sometimes lagging response to Ebola. Gates describe the WHO's current response network as "severely understaffed and underfunded."

His plan would also increase disease-surveillance abilities and laboratory capacity in poor countries, as well as create a stockpile of needed supplies. He also called for countries to maintain a "pool of volunteers" who can be immediately brought in to deal with an outbreak, as well as a trained group of military personnel.

Gates also stresses the need for more research to create new vaccines and treatments. He specifically points to the lack of universal vaccine for influenza, which he said needs a far larger INVESTMENT.

"There is work being done toward this goal, but it has garnered nowhere near the resources that it deserves," he said.

He said the response network could also address a potential biothreat.

source: http://thehill.com

The European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) has been joined by the World Health Organization (WHO) to launch the 7th annual International Day for Fighting Infection, April 24, 2015. This year's event sees the European society exploring vaccines as a possible solution in the global, cross-border fight against antimicrobial resistance.

The event is free for anyone to attend and coincides with the ESCMID annual congress (ECCMID) in Copenhagen and the WHO's World Immunization Week. The overall mission of the day is to increase international collaboration and to highlight cutting-edge methods in the battle against infectious disease. The WHO will be providing an update from its European office across Ebola, extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and polio, while ESCMID will explore how nations can start harnessing the potential of vaccines in the intensifying battle against antimicrobial resistance.

Following International Day for Fighting Infection will be the 25th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, which will be held April 25-28, 2015.

Murat Akova, ESCMID president, says, "Our annual 'International Day for Fighting Infection' has traditionally been held on or around St George's day, and it seems very fitting as the war against antimicrobial resistance can now be fought with a needle rather than a sword - vaccines have huge potential to help combat this growing problem. This event is designed specifically with the goal of spreading the word throughout the medical community of the society's mission and solutions we are exploring. For instance, the ESCMID guidelines on antimicrobial resistance should be the basis of all healthcare professions' response. Moreover, this year the WHO has expanded its collaboration with us, recognising our excellent work and is throwing its full support behind the campaign."

source: http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com

The World Health Organization says it has created a panel of independent experts to assess its response to the biggest-ever Ebola outbreak in history.

In a statement Tuesday, the U.N. health agency said the panel was commissioned after a resolution passed by its executive board. The panel will be chaired by Barbara , a former chief executive of Oxfam GB. A preliminary report is due in May.

WHO's handling of the Ebola outbreak that has killed over 9,900 people in West Africa has been heavily criticized. WHO admitted in an internal draft report that it fumbled early attempts to curb the outbreak, blaming incompetent staff and a lack of real-time information. Others also criticized WHO for not declaring an international health emergency until nearly 1,000 people had died.

source: http://www.vancouversun.com/

The World Health Organization will start large-scale testing of an experimental Ebola vaccine in Guinea on Saturday to see how effective it might be in preventing future outbreaks of the deadly virus.

The West African nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea have been hardest hit in the yearlong Ebola outbreak, which is estimated to have left more than 9,800 people dead. In a statement Thursday, the U.N. health agency said the vaccine study will focus on Basse Guinee, the region that has Guinea's most Ebola cases.

The health agency's vaccination strategy in Guinea aims to create a buffer zone around an Ebola case to prevent its further spread — an approach used to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Officials will vaccinate people who have already been exposed to Ebola cases and are at risk of developing the disease.

The vaccine being tested — VSV-EBOV — was developed by Canada and is now licensed to Merck. A second vaccine — one developed by U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline — will be tested in a separate study as supplies become available. The Guinea trial is being conducted with other health partners including Doctors Without Borders, Epicentre, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Guinean government.

"If a vaccine is found effective, it will be the first preventive tool against Ebola in history," WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan said in a statement.

Bertrand Draguez, medical director of Doctors Without Borders, applauded the move, which he called long overdue.

"For more than a year, we have been racing around the clock to stop the epidemic from spreading further," he noted.

Authorities in Liberia discharged the country's last Ebola patient on Thursday. It will take 42 days of no new cases for Liberia to be declared Ebola-free by WHO standards.

WHO on Wednesday reported 132 new Ebola cases last week, an increase from the 99 cases reported the previous week. The agency said the spread of Ebola remains "widespread" in Sierra Leone and noted that cases have jumped both there and in Guinea.

WHO said only about half of new Ebola patients in Guinea are connected to known cases, meaning that health officials are unable to track where the disease is spreading in the other half of cases. WHO also said unsafe traditional burials — a high-risk factor for Ebola transmission — continue to occur in both Guinea and Sierra Leone, and health workers in those countries are still being attacked by those wary of their efforts.

Officials also said the number of Ebola deaths taking place outside of hospitals still remains high in Guinea and Sierra Leone, "suggesting that the need for early isolation and treatment is not yet understood, accepted or acted upon."

WHO had previously set a goal of isolating all Ebola cases and ensuring all burials were safe by January 1.

source: http://www.thestarphoenix.com

Russia has seen more than 3,000 measles cases since the beginning of last year, The World Health Organization has said.

The World Health Organization in Europe called on Wednesday for measles vaccination campaigns to be stepped up across the region after recording 22,000 cases of the highly infectious disease since the start of 2014.

Saying she was "taken aback" by high case numbers, Zsuzsanna Jakab, the UN health agency's European director, said the 22,149 reported cases from seven countries threatened the region's goal of eliminating measles by the end of 2015.

Even though measles cases fell by 50 percent from 2013 to 2014, large outbreaks continue in both eastern and western Europe, the WHO said.

Italy has seen 1,674 measles cases since the beginning of last year, while Germany has had 583, Kyrgyzstan 7,477 and Russia more than 3,240.

Measles is a contagious and sometimes deadly viral disease which can SPREAD very swiftly among unvaccinated children.

There is no specific treatment and most people recover within a few weeks, but, particularly in poor and malnourished children and people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious complications including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhea, ear infection and pneumonia.

source: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/

More than 1 billion teenagers and young adults are at risk of hearing loss due to the unsafe use of personal audio devices such as smartphones and exposure to damaging levels of sound, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to devote today's International Ear Care Day to "Making Listening Safe."

"As they go about their daily lives doing what they enjoy, more and more young people are placing themselves at risk of hearing loss," Dr. Etienne Krug, WHO Director for the Department for Management of Non-communicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention said in a press release.

"They should be aware that once you lose your hearing, it won't come back," Dr. Krug continued, adding: "Taking simple preventive actions will allow people to continue to enjoy themselves without putting their hearing at risk."

International Ear Care Day is an annual advocacy event held on 3 March. Designated at the First International Conference on Prevention and Rehabilitation of Hearing Impairment in Beijing, China, in 2007, the Day aims to raise awareness and promote ear and hearing care across the world, according to WHO.

This year, WHO is launching the Make Listening Safe initiative to draw attention to the dangers of unsafe listening and promote safer practices.

"In collaboration with partners worldwide, WHO will alert young people and their families about the risks of noise-induced hearing loss and advocate towards governments for greater attention to this issue as part of their broader efforts to prevent hearing loss generally," the UN health agency said.

According to WHO, "some 1.1 billion teenagers and young adults are at risk of hearing loss due to the unsafe use of personal audio devices, including smartphones, and exposure to damaging levels of sound at noisy entertainment venues such as nightclubs, bars and sporting events."

"Data from studies in middle- and high-income countries analysed by WHO indicate that among teenagers and young adults aged 12-35 years, nearly 50 per cent are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal audio devices and around 40 per cent are exposed to potentially damaging levels of sound at entertainment venues," the agency said.

WHO explained that safe listening depends on the intensity or loudness of sound, and the duration and frequency of listening. The agency recommends that the highest permissible level of noise exposure in the workplace is 85 decibels up to a maximum of eight hours per day. Many patrons of nightclubs, bars and sporting events are often exposed to even higher levels of sound, and should therefore considerably reduce the duration of exposure. For example, exposure to noise levels of 100 decibels, which is typical in such venues, is safe for no more than 15 minutes.

"Teenagers and young people can better protect their hearing by keeping the volume down on personal audio devices, wearing earplugs when visiting noisy venues, and using carefully fitted, and, if possible, noise-cancelling earphones/headphones," according to WHO. "They can also limit the time spent engaged in noisy activities by taking short listening breaks and restricting the daily use of personal audio devices to less than one hour."

"With the help of smartphone apps, they can monitor safe listening levels," it said.

WHO said governments also have a role to play by developing and enforcing strict legislation on recreational noise.

"Parents, teachers and physicians can educate young people about safe listening, while managers of entertainment venues can respect the safe noise levels set by their respective venues, use sound limiters, and offer earplugs and "chill out" rooms to patrons," according to WHO.

WHO went on to say manufacturers can design personal audio devices with safety features and display information about safe listening on products and packaging.

Worldwide, the UN health agency says 360 million people today have moderate to profound hearing loss due to various causes, such as noise, genetic conditions, complications at birth, certain infectious diseases, chronic ear infections, the use of particular drugs, and ageing.

"It is estimated that half of all cases of hearing loss are avoidable," the agency said.

source: http://www.un.org/