The World Health Organization (WHO) published their largest survey ever on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) on Tuesday. In summary, MDR-TB is more prevalent, and more in need of control, than ever.

“TB drug resistance needs a frontal assault. If countries and the international community fail to address it aggressively now we will lose this battle,” said Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Stop TB Department. “In addition to specifically confronting drug-resistant TB and saving lives, programmes worldwide must immediately improve their performance in diagnosing all TB cases rapidly and treating them until cured, which is the best way to prevent the development of drug resistance.”

Read the full study here, some key findings below:

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• The WHO estimates that there are nearly 500,000 new cases of MDR-TB each year, about 5% of the approximately 9 million new cases of regular TB per year
• The highest rates of MDR-TB were found in countries in the former Soviet Union and China. China and India carry about half the global burden of MDR-TB and the former Soviet states another 7%. Rwanda had a noticeably high percentage of MDR-TB cases among TB patients (3.9%), but data on MDR-TB presence in Africa was rather limited in the study.
• Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), a virtually untreatable form of TB, has been recorded in 45 countries.
• Surveys in Latvia and the Ukraine found nearly twice the level of MDR-TB among TB patients living with HIV compared to those without. In South Africa, 44% of TB patients are estimated to be co-infected with HIV.
• MDR-TB and XDR-TB are progressively more expensive and difficult to treat.

The WHO estimates that $4.8 billion is needed for overall TB control in low and middle income countries in 2008, with $1 billion for MDR-TB and XDR-TB. There is a total finance gap for 2008 of $ 2.5 billion, including a $ 500 million gap for MDR-TB and XDR-TB.

We’ve received a lot of calls and emails from Jubilee supporters who have called during our Leap Into Action Call-In Days their senators and representatives about the Jubilee Act (S. 2166 and H.R.2634), which will soon to be considered in the House and Senate.

The Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation will expand eligibility for 100 percent debt cancellation without harmful economic conditions to 67 impoverished countries in the Global South.

When you call your senators or representative, you’re calling on behalf of the millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Asia who suffer when debt repayment must be prioritized over health care, education and clean water.

Every day, Sub-Saharan Africa sends $100,000 back to America in debt payments. Imagine what could be done with that money if it were to stay in those countries.

The call you make today is a part of a national campaign to pass the Jubilee Act within the 55 legislative days Congress has this year. This is the last and final session of Congress before the elections with most of the legislative days being frontloaded prior to June.

This tight deadline makes it even more imperative for ONE members and others to call their members of Congress and urge them to co-sponsor this bill.

Get the Call Script here.

More Information About the Jubilee Act here.

-Monet Cooper, Jubilee USA

There’s an important editorial in the LA Times today about drug-resistant tuberculosis.

A couple of excerpts:

“A new survey by the World Health Organization shows that drug-resistant tuberculosis is even more widespread than had been feared — on average, it’s present in 5% of new TB cases. That’s 500,000 drug-resistant cases a year. If most Americans aren’t concerned by this, it’s because they don’t yet understand that drug-resistant tuberculosis is no longer a disease that threatens mainly HIV and AIDS patients and the Third World poor. It threatens us all. Worldwide, only 8% of TB cases occur in HIV/AIDS patients…

Even after the panic last year caused by Andrew Speaker, the jet-setting honeymooner found to have MDR TB, funding to stop the disease has lagged. The WHO, which gets its money from United Nations member states, estimates it needs $4.8 billion for global TB control. But despite increases in funding from the U.S., Britain and private donors, it still faces a $2.5-billion shortfall.

You can read the full piece here.

Some of you may remember the posts earlier this year describing the work of teacher Matt Cone at Rock Bridge High School. Well, Matt continues to do amazing work with his students and this week the seniors in his Contemporary Issues class had the unique experience of talking with the First Lady via video conference.

Many of the questions posed dealt with the President and Mrs. Bush’s recent trip to Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the work that ONE and other NGOs are doing to help the world’s poor. As if talking to the First Lady was not cool enough, the students wore ONE shirts to emphasize their commitment to ending global poverty and disease.

Check out some of the student comments about the experience after the jump.

-Katie Andrews, Field Organizer (KS, OH, MI, MO, WV)

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(Congresswoman Nita Lowey is the Chairwoman of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee)

The ability of the U.S. Congress to set spending priorities for the federal government is among its most critical responsibilities. As Chair of the Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, I have worked to support international development and treatment for diseases like AIDS, TB, and malaria and to reduce poverty and hunger. Helping those who are suffering is not only our moral responsibility, it helps to strengthen stability and engender goodwill around the world, which improve our national security.

The U.S. government agencies that lead our international assistance efforts must be efficient and effective. This week, I am holding two oversight hearings focused on the budget request that President Bush recently sent to Congress for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee will analyze these budget requests and assess these agencies’ successes and the challenges that they continue to face.

I thank you for your interest in international humanitarian and development assistance and hope you will continue to follow my subcommittee’s efforts to alleviate suffering around the world.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Nita Lowey

ONE members are a bit like the US Postal Service; neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow can stop us! Even in the middle of a frigid winter in our snowy region, ONE members are taking action!

This edition of the ONE midwest newsletter features stories about ONE members reaching out to legislators, fellow students, community members, and even peers across the globe in Africa to make poverty history.

The”ONEwsletter” serves Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin ONE members as a place to share ideas, compare experiences, and inspire one another to take action in the fight against extreme poverty. Read the Midwest newsletter here

-Morgan Granata and Leise Grimmer, ONE volunteers, Illinois

(InterAction President & CEO Sam Worthington is visiting humanitarian workers in Sudan.)

The trip to Khartoum was a typical flight to Europe followed by another seven hours in the air, landing just south of the Sahara. A few key strokes of the customs agent’s computer and my American passport, with its appropriate visa, had a newÂ%C

Late Tuesday night, bipartisan cooperation in the House Foreign Affairs Committee moved us one critical step closer to approving the 5-year expansion of the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” or “PEPFAR.”

The legislation they passed yesterday, “The Lantos-Hyde US Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria Act” would transition PEPFAR from an emergency response to a sustainable response program, and provide for expanded training for 140,000 new health care professionals and community care workers. The bill also strongly focuses on prevention and includes comprehensive efforts that place a special emphasis on women and on the underlying factors which make them vulnerable to HIV infection, including a focus on violence against women.

In all, the U.S. would provide lifesaving treatment for at least three million AIDS patients; prevent 12 million new infections; provide care for five million AIDS orphans; and train and support 140,000 new health professionals. The bill also provides $4 billion for the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis and $5 billion to fight malaria.

Although the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s action this week marks a critical momentum shift for PEPFAR’s reauthorization, the full House must continue to uphold this commitment to bipartisanship and pass the the bill (protecting all provisions) during a House floor vote.

-Virginia Simmons

The 100,000 “Visit Africa” petitions have been delivered and we’ve heard back from the candidates.

After you check out the candidates’ responses, take a few minutes and write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Writing a letter to the editor is your chance to talk about the poverty-fighting successes highlighted on the recent presidential trip to Africa – successes ONE members have helped make possible – and our campaign urging the next president to visit Africa in his or her first term.

-Aaron Banks

For Americans, and especially our next president, President Bush’s trip to Africa last week wasn’t a victory lap. It’s a starting line. A challenge. The opening, not the closing, of a legacy in which medicine and health diplomacy serve as a currency for peace.

The trip demonstrated for the next president, whoever that may be, the tremendous opportunity that awaits in Africa. Yes, there is much work to do, and we are still confronted by staggering realities: More than 24.7 million people still have HIV/AIDS in Africa alone; thousands still die from malaria each day, and more than one billion people worldwide still don’t have access to clean water.

But never before have we had the tools we now possess to do this vital work – the medicines and technologies that are saving lives as you read these words have never been so inexpensive and so readily available. When you think about it, it’s amazing that AIDS drugs now cost as little as $1 a day . . . that a mosquito net can now protect a child from malaria for five years for $5 . . . that a well can provide clean, safe drinking water for 20 years at a cost of only $20 a person.
And never before have we had so many answers to the doubts of the past, the criticisms that dominated the debate over the effectiveness of American foreign assistance for a generation. Many of the old presumptions about Africa and other developing regions have been proved wrong, addressed through transparency and accountability, or dismissed by new approaches and 21st century technologies.

Last week President Bush visited some of the HIV-positive men, women, and children in poverty-stricken communities who are living today because of American-funded medicines. To date, around 1.4 million Africans now receive anti-retroviral pills through the president’s AIDS initiative.

Want to see health diplomacy making a difference? Want to see medicine serving as a currency for peace? Stare into the eyes of a mother whose daughter is alive thanks to America.

Critics once said that investing in Africa was worse than throwing money away, that the dollars would find their way into corrupt leaders’ bank accounts and perpetuate poverty. But the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) has changed the way America provides foreign assistance, attacking corruption head on by engaging leaders to take the difficult steps toward government reform, accountability, and transparency.

Just last week the president signed the largest MCA grant ever, a $698 million agreement with Tanzania. More than merely sending dollars, the MCA ensures that American assistance not only reaches those it’s designed to help, but that it’s setting structures in place – the rule of law, freer economic policies – for African countries to thrive on their own.
Last week we saw what American compassion and leadership can look like when invested in proven, effective solutions we know work.

I hope our next president is paying attention. I hope he or she sees the power of American health diplomacy, of using medicine as a currency for peace: the power to save lives, to lead under the guiding principles of compassion and human dignity.

We have the science. We can afford the pills and bed nets and wells. We have answers to the classic criticisms of the past. The question that remains is simple: Do we have the will to employ all this know-how, all these answers to help countless people throughout the world?

That sounds like a question for our next president.

-Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D.