News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Tuberculosis (TB) experts who met in Geneva this week said the global TB community needs to step up the fight against drug resistance and increase appropriate care and treatment "to avoid a scenario where TB becomes incurable," the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The tuberculosis toll in Europe continued a slow overall decline in 2010, but the treatment success rate for the disease is slipping as drug-resistant strains of TB grow more common, according to a report released today by the European Union (EU) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

(CIDRAP News) – Infectious-disease specialty groups are teaming up to call for increased use of antimicrobial stewardship programs, saying such efforts can help preserve the effectiveness of anti-infective drugs while reducing medical costs.

(CIDRAP News) – New surveillance data in Europe show a steep rise in the percentage of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumonia, a drug-resistant issue seen as a growing threat in the United States as well.

(CIDRAP News) – Against a backdrop of state, national, and international efforts to raise awareness about appropriate antibiotic use, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a new tracking system to monitor use of the drugs in hospitals.

(CIDRAP News) – A new large-scale study of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections shows that infection rates have dropped in hospitalized people and those recently exposed to healthcare settings, but experts aren't sure what factors are driving the decline.