July 2009

Dear Colleague,

In this month’s guest column, appropriately titled “Laboratories—time to end the neglect” Working Group members Andrew Ramsay and Emma Back highlight a vital component of health systems critical to improving global drug resistance management. They argue that incorporating drug resistance surveillance into broader public health surveillance is essential for slowing resistance, as is creation of a broader information sharing system among local-level public health laboratories.

In other news, the UK opposition conservative party has just released a green paper highlighting its plans for a new results-oriented approach to aid, including health. It is encouraging to note that the global drug-resistance problem is mentioned several times. CGD’s Drug Resistance Working Group has had the opportunity to provide background information to the key Member of Parliament behind the green paper.

As always, we welcome your thoughts at [email protected].

Regards,

Rachel Nugent
Deputy Director for Global Health
Center for Global Development

Laboratories—time to end the neglect

by DRWG members Andrew Ramsay and Emma Back

The work of the CGD Drug Resistance Working Group has been focused on some of the major diseases of poverty such as TB, malaria, pneumonia and cholera that impact so disastrously upon the human and economic development of poorer countries. In its analysis of what drives drug resistance across the world, the Working Group has also looked at some of the most neglected aspects of developing country health services.

Laboratories are perhaps the most neglected of all health system components in developing countries, and have been termed the "Achilles Heel" of global efforts to combat infectious diseases.

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IN THE NEWS

Bacteria (Besides TB)

• Antimicrobial use in livestock (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Antibiotic use in poultry farming and its impact on resistance (Montreal Gazette)

TB

• Global spread of XDR-TB (Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report)
• Study launched to determine MDR-TB prevalence in Nigeria (Vanguard)
• Parkinson’s Drugs effective against resistant strains of TB? (Reuters.com)
• New drug to treat MDR-TB? (Irin Plus News)
• Prices slashed for liquid culture TB diagnostic testing (PR Newswire)
• Speeding up new TB drug development (Reuters.com)

Malaria

• Anti-malarial drug makers ignore WHO ban on monotherapies (Naturenews.com)
• 30% of Kenyan malaria cases treated with recommended ACTs (Daily Nation)
• Village-based treatment and education programs driving decrease in malaria in Cambodia from 2003-2008 (Phnompenh Post)
• Gates support for WWARN (ZeeNews.com)
• The battle against resistance in Cambodia (New Scientist)

HIV

• ART resistance development in Kenya (7thspace.com)

OTHER

• 1st case of resistant swine flu (BBC News)
• More concerns about resistant swine flu: Hong Kong (The Canadian Press)
• Better swine flu testing guidelines, smarter use of labs needed (Theage.com)
• Swine flu resistance fears from New Zealand (the Press)
• Rapid swine flu diagnosis (China View)
• The threat of superbugs (Chicago Tribune)
• Transmission of resistant infections: from people to pets and back to people (Reporternews.com)

Featured VIDEO

• ACT-resistant strains of malaria in Asia continue to cause concern; BBC reports

WORKING GROUP Updates 

• Rachel Nugent discussed “Commonalities in Multi-Disease Drug Resistance and the Role of Global Collective Action” for a Pharmaceutical Policy Research Seminar at Harvard Medical School on June 10^th.

latest research

• Summary of ASHP/IDSA/SIDP Vancomycin Monitoring Recommendations: A Focus on Osteomyelitis (Orthopedics, K. M. Malloy and G. A. Davis)

PARTNER RESOURCES

• Funding for WHO’s 2nd round of patient safety research grants opened on July 1; deadline is September 30
• The UN takes a look at the impact of counterfeit drugs in West Africa: Transnational Trafficking and the Rule of Law in West Africa: a Threat Assessment

RECENT/UPCOMING EVENTS

• 2nd Global HIV/AIDS Surveillance Meeting, Bangkok, Thailand. March 2009
• XVIII International HIV Drug Resistance Workshop, Fort Myers, Florida, USA. June 2009: Abstracts and Selected Slide Presentations
• 10th Commonwealth Pharmacists Association Conference, Accra, Ghana. August 5-9, 2009: DRWG is hosting a panel on 6 August; please join us if you are there.
• International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Conference, Istanbul, Turkey. September 3-8, 2009: DRWG will participate in a panel
• Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), San Francisco, CA, USA. September 12-15, 2009