Scientists, researchers, clinicians, and technical experts weren't the only ones busy at this week's fifth annual International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention. I took some time away from the conference venue to walk in a TB-HIV march organized by South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
Last Friday, Joanne Carter, Executive Director of RESULTS in the USA was selected for the position of Board Member for the Developed Country NGO Delegation to the Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Since it was first conceived eight years ago, Joanne and RESULTS has been fully engaged with the Global Fund, in particular playing an important role in resource mobilisation.
The time and place for a gathering like this couldn’t have been more appropriate: July 18, Nelson Mandela’s birthday, in Cape Town. It was in Polkmoor Prison on the outskirts of this city where, in 1988, while being forced to serve what was then a life sentence for sabotage and treason, Mandela developed tuberculosis.
Yesterday President Obama announced a new "Global Health Initiative." Gayle Smith from the National Security Council and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the chief of staff's brother, summoned a number of my colleagues to the Old Executive Office building early yesterday to announce this new initiative with great excitement.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported today that the amount of funding for TB in the 22 countries with the highest burden has more than doubled since 2002. At first glance this seems like great news but closer analysis of the data shows that we still have a long way to go to fully fund the global TB response.
Today Michel Sidibe, the newly appointed executive director of UNAIDS took the organization in a bold new direction. Under his predecessor, founding director Peter Piot, TB was given little attention by UNAIDS. But today, Michel Sidibe came to Rio to tell the world that TB/HIV will be one of his key priorities. Given that it's the biggest killer of people living with HIV that seems only fitting.
Today at the Stop TB Partner´s Forum in Rio de Janeiro, indigenous leaders and community members representing approximately 370 million indigenous people globally, in over 70 countries, launched the Stop Global Indigenous TB Initiative and a strategic framework that would guide national TB control programs to work with these communities.