2008

Dear Colleague,

The work of the DRWG is reaching a crescendo this month as the group decides on its recommendations to address global drug resistance. A draft report will be shared with e-newsletter readers and others, and we hope you will generously offer your comments and suggestions. As you know, we are looking for practical and feasible ways forward to slow drug resistance emergence and transmission, and your input to this process is critical!

The DRWG met last week to review and discuss the recommendations. Prior to that, pre-consultation sessions held in October in Paris, France (see guest column by Paul Nunn below) and Bamako, Mali in November (view presentation here) proved very informative to the recommendation development process. Further consultation will take place in early 2009; please email Drug_Resistance@cgdev.org for any suggestions of appropriate venues.

There are two current news items I would like to alert you to, both of them highly disturbing: increasing evidence from Cambodia that ACTs are losing their effectiveness and more evidence of widespread counterfeit drug availability.

As always, we welcome your thoughts at drug_resistance@cgdev.org.

Regards,

Rachel Nugent
Deputy Director for Global Health
Center for Global Development

FEATURED COLUMN - WORKING GROUP FINDS ITS IDEAS RELEVANT TO AND SUPPORTED BY TB COMMUNITY AT PARIS CONFERENCE

By Paul Nunn, Coordinator, World Health Organization, Geneva.

The Drug Resistance Working Group organized two "pre-consultation" meetings in Paris on October 18th to take advantage of the 39th World Union Conference on Lung Health taking place at the same time.

Participants were interested by the similarity of events that gives rise to resistance across diseases - TB is not different. They expressed concern at how use of drugs for other conditions might be exacerbating drug resistance in TB, including the formation of extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB). Examples of this include widespread empirical use of fluoroquinolones for conditions such as community-acquired pneumonia and chronic diarrhea, especially in individuals with HIV infection. These were possible drivers of the recent XDR-TB outbreak in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

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IN THE NEWS

Antibiotics

• Emerging drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in UK hospitals (BBC News)
• The contribution of antibiotic overuse to resistance development (Medical News Today)
• New EU-funded AEROPATH project to develop drugs against resistant bugs (Cordis news)
• A possible new drug against MRSA? (Wall Street Journal)

TB

• XDR-TB in Armenia (New York Times)
• High-tech laboratory capable of diagnosing MDR-TB in one day opened in Uganda (Daily Monitor)
• MDR-TB Prevalence in China Nearly Twice Global Averages (Global Health Reporting)
• XDR-TB in South Africa: Ripping Lives and Families Apart (BBC News)
• XDR-TB "Nurtured by Global Complacency," Obama Administration Must Act, Nicholas Kristof Writes (Global Health Reporting)
• Poor communication between government agencies helped individuals with drug-resistant TB enter the US in 2007 (Global Health Reporting)
• XDR-TB cases on the decline in the United States (Medical News Today)

Malaria

• Terrifying reality that ACTs may be losing their effectiveness: evidence from Cambodia (The Phnom Penh Post)
• Filipino Private Sector Helps Build Information Systems to Heighten Malaria Response (Philstar)

HIV

• Study predicts HIV can be eliminated within a decade (Associated Press)
• HIV, TB and drug resistance in South Africa (AllAfrica.com)
• Clade C more likely to develop K65R multi-drug resistance mutation (Aidsmap)

Other

• Tamiflu-resistant strains in Scotland (The Herald)

Featured VIDEO

• How does antibiotic resistance develop? What are the development practices drug companies employ when producing antimicrobials?
  
  Click here to view the second part of a three-part presentation/discussion given on September 18, 2008 at the Koshland Science Museum in Washington, D.C by Dr. Stuart Levy and Dr. Linda Tollefson.

latest research

• Emergence of Extensive Drug Resistance during Treatment for Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (New England Journal of Medicine, Cox et al)

PARTNER RESOURCES

• Europe launched its 1st European Antibiotics Awareness day on November 18, 2008. As part of this campaign, numerous awareness-raising materials were disseminated to the public and to journalists

RECENT EVENTS

• Highlights are available from the recent 39th World Conference on Lung Health