Europe urged to fund more tuberculosis research

The report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) found that all European
countries, except Sweden, “have failed to prioritise” tuberculosis,
contributing to a “huge global underfunding” for the disease.

The TB Alliance has several new compounds in the pipeline that are set
to enter into expensive clinical trials in the coming years. The other
proposal is a prize fund to stimulate research on new point-of-care
diagnostics. An ideal development would be a test suitable for field
use that does not depend on sputum. There is also the promising
technology already developed by the US military to detect other
pathogens that have the potential to rapidly and simply diagnose
patients with tuberculosis and drug resistance based on DNA detection,
explains Moldenhauer. Sputum microscopy currently detects only about
half of tuberculosis cases, and is more ineffective in people with
HIV/AIDS and in children. MSF estimates that a prize of €50 million
would be a sufficient incentive for companies, and adds a pull
incentive to other financing mechanisms.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61935-8/fulltext#article_upsell

The Lancet, Volume 374, Issue 9701, Page 1584, 7 November 2009

doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61935-8