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THE NEXT EPIDEMIC//MULTIDRUG-RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS, WHICH GAINED A FOOTHOLD IN THE FORMER SOVIET STATES, IS CROSSING INTERNATIONAL BORDERS WITH EASE, INCLUDING AMERICA'S.

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) - Sunday, March 21, 1999

Author: JOHN DONNELLY and DAVE MONTGOMERY Washington Bureau

EXCERPT

At the urging of billionaire financier George Soros , first lady Hillary Rodman Clinton in October convened a meeting of top administration health officials, a National Security Council official, the heads of the World Bank and WHO, and tuberculosis experts.

Since then, the United States has given $1 million to fund a TB-control effort in the Russian city of Ivanovo; the World Bank is considering a loan to the Russian government to fight TB; and WHO has endorsed several treatment programs in the former Soviet states.

Intense regimen subdues tough TB strain

The Denver Post - Thursday, November 4, 1999

Author: John Donnelly The Boston Globe

EXCERPT

The Boston health care community worried that the worker's illness would trigger an outbreak, but fortunately it never occurred. But the tragedy also propelled Partners in Health, begun by Drs. Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim , back to Peru to find the source of the multidrug-resistant TB - and then figure out how to treat it.

Now, four years later, their effort not only has saved the lives of about 100 people in Lima who had the disease, but they hope it saves tens of thousands more around the world.

For several years, the World Health Organization and others at the center of global TB control had been saying that if you were poor in the Third World and you contracted multidrug-resistant TB, there was nothing to be done. Most would die. Drugs were too expensive and treatment too difficult.

But in Lima, Partners in Health proved otherwise.

Following a meeting with global TB experts last week in New York, including WHO officials, Partners in Health's Peru prescription - an intensified regimen in which additional drugs are given to people over a longer period of time - will be adopted in pilot projects in drug-resistant TB “hot spots” such as Russia, Latvia and Kazakhstan. Comprehensive programs there and elsewhere in the world, however, won't start until caregivers secure hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding.

That hunt for money is now under way by Partners in Health co-founders Farmer and Kim , who are taking their pitches to foundations established by the barons of the 20th century: Rockefeller, Soros , Gates, Kellogg and Ford.

U.S. faces new TB threat - Cuts in spending presage `castastrophe’ from drug-resistant strains

The Washington Times - Sunday, December 12, 1999

Author: August Gribbin, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EXCERPT

In October, a Harvard Medical School study titled “The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis” reported that drug-resistant TB is spreading farther and faster than previously thought.

Although some 8 million people around the globe contract TB each year and some 3 million die, no one knows for sure how many now have drug-resistant TB.

Based on incomplete data, the World Health Organization three years ago reported 50 million cases. That number was understood to be low at the time.

(snip)

The Harvard researchers warn that “the transmission of resistant organisms is ongoing.” They caution that no nation is immune to an epidemic.

In an interview, Dr. Lee Reichman, executive director of New Jersey's National Tuberculosis Center, assesses the situation more bluntly. He says a new TB epidemic, “can't not happen [in the United States] unless someone does something about it.”

Dr. Reichman is one of the 332 physicians, researchers and scholars who participated in the Harvard study, which was commissioned by the Open Society Institute of billionaire philanthropist George Soros .

(snip)

Foremost is the fact that tuberculosis bacteria, including drug-resistant strains, spread with remarkable ease - by the cough or sneeze of a TB victim.

“A person with the active disease can cough in a room and leave. Someone then entering the room and breathing the air can contract the infection,” explains Dr. Jim Yong Kim , who wrote the Harvard report with Dr. Paul Farmer, the principal author.