Dear Colleague,

Our guest column highlights the pressing issues around access to, availability of and use of information about drug resistance.

The Working Group staff is formulating ideas that we will develop into draft recommendations to counter global drug resistance. Prior to circulating these recommendations widely during our consultation phase (November -- January), we are taking the opportunity to meet with invited experts on 18 October as part of the UNION TB meetings in Paris. Five members of the Working Group will join CGD in sponsoring these expert "pre-consultations."

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

Regards,

Rachel Nugent
Deputy Director for Global Health
Center for Global Development

FEATURED COLUMN - EMMA BACK

Drug resistance Information Availability, Access and Use

Drug efficacy is a common property resource that must be protected, and the basis for effective protection measures is having information about where and how resistance occurs. This type of information -- including scientific, population and systems data -- constitutes a global public good, and should be available to all who need it.Read More.

RECENT MEDIA MENTIONS

Rachel Nugent sheds some light on the problem of drug resistance in the latest issue of Foreign Policy.

IN THE NEWS

Antibiotics

• No point in taking antibiotics if they don't work (Scientific American)
• The increasing concern of drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria (Wall Street Journal)
• Antibiotic SWAT teams on the move (Wall Street Journal)
• Sri Lanka's recent surveillance efforts to capture drug resistant bugs (Lanka Business Online)
• Overuse of antibiotics drives resistance (Telegraph.co.uk)
• Overuse also leads to drug ineffectiveness (Tufts Daily)

TB

• Eli Lilly and Merck opening up molecular libraries in search of TB treatment (Seattle Times)
• Preventive TB vaccines could increase risk of drug resistance (Western Daily Press)
  
• Swaziland, TB and the Kingdom (The Times)
• Breathing? An option when one has TB? (Health-e, South Africa)
• First-line treatment can cure some MDR-TB infected patients (Africa Science News Service)
• Uganda to determine levels of drug-resistant TB (Ugandan Daily Monitor)
• India plans to treat DR-TB nationwide by 2010 (Thai-Indian News)

Malaria

• World leaders announce $3B for Global Malaria Action Plan during UN MDG Summit (Seattle Times)
  
• Researchers sequence genome of 2 malaria parasites: P vivax and P. knowlesi (Reuters)
  
• Resources for the Future convenes forum on AMFm (RFF)
  
• MMV announces its 5 year plan for new drugs (SciDev.Net)
  

HIV

• High HIV-MDR resistance levels in San Francisco (Aidsmap)
• Resistance hinders AIDS treatment (East African Standard)
• Drug-resistance arising from PMTCT in Thailand (Bangkok Post)

Other

• Flu virus is becoming more resistant to Tamiflu (Heraldsun.com.au)

Featured VIDEO

RECENT/PAST EVENTS

• Skim the program for MDR and XDR events taking place during the 16-20 October 39th Union World Conference on Tuberculosis and Lung Health
• Conference highlights new drugs to treat drug-resistant strains of HIV (napwa)

PARTNER resources

• Learn more about CDC's new initiative to raise awareness about drug resistance.
• Meeting the challenge of antibiotic resistance; ReACT's reaction.
  
  

latest research

• HIV testing guidelines (CID)
• Minority HIV-1 Drug Resistance Mutations Are Present in Antiretroviral Treatment--Native Populations and Associate with Reduced Treatment Efficacy (PLoS Medicine)