The above quote comes from Steven Reed, the co-inventor of a ‘new’ TB vaccine that's been seriously hampered in its development by one of the biggest of Big Pharma. The shameful story of its (lack of) development sadly shines a terrible light on how our biomedical system works with such casual indifference to the plight of those most threatened by tuberculosis (while it works so very efficiently for the profit of the pharma companies themselves and so and for the benefit of their shareholders, and so deprives those most in need of its immense and impressive technical expertise). The Background ..read more

Today is World Lung Day (September 25th) This important day was first conceived and created during the 2016 Assembly of the Forum of International Respiratory Societies by its then President Michiaki Mishima and is intended to raise awareness of lung health, something that we have all become more sensitive to courtesy of the SARS- CoV-2 coronavirus, and so it is unquestionably a big deal day. The theme of this World Lung Day for 2023 is ‘Access to prevention and treatment for all. Leave no one behind’ - noble aspirations for sure. Lung disease comes in many treacherous forms: COPD, lung cance ..read more

In many Buddhist traditions it is customary to mark the 49th day after death. Today is the 49th day since we lost Donald Eadie, a treasured member of our little team of Moxafrica trustees. His funeral, which was attended by many, was a very powerful event. There is a link to the funeral service which has already been watched by hundreds of people unable to attend the event themselves - (63) Funeral of Rev'd Donald Eadie - YouTube The last time we saw him (the evening before he died) Donald was very weak and was only able to manage three or four words at a time before running out of breath. Bo ..read more

It remains impossible to get our heads around how little those folk who are unlucky enough to be infected with TB (who also uncoincidentally are predominantly poor) really matter to the authorities (whether at national or global levels) who are entrusted with their protective welfare. Here’s why we say this. Five years ago in 2018, a special High Level Meeting on TB was convened at the UN. At this meeting a cluster of targets and commitments were unanimously agreed by all heads of member states in respect of TB. Five years later, and those targets have been appallingly missed, some of them mas ..read more

We’ve just come across this: the Treatment Action Group’s ‘Tuberculosis Vaccines – Pipeline Report 2022’. It's a terrific analysis of where we are today with new vaccine development for TB. If you're at all interested in global health and equity of provision, we really encourage you to read it (it's not too long), but we hope that TAG won’t mind our extracting some of their excellent text and adding some contextual commentary of our own to it. We’re certainly sure they won’t mind us identifying that the need for new TB vaccine is urgent and what's more isn’t new. The first official target of ..read more

Starting next week, an exciting new initiative begins in South Africa. Once again the focus will be on in moxa and TB, but on this occasion with an interesting new twist. We have been invited by the ‘Bellhaven Harm Reduction Centre’ in the centre of Durban, to come and introduce (and train, of course) their staff to moxa. Home - Bellhaven (bellhavenharmreductioncentre.co.za) A total of five (!) issues that make this new initiative potentially really significant... We accepted Bellhaven's invitation enthusiastically – not least because this is the first TB initiative that we will have been able ..read more

This unfortunately is a really bad news story relating to the current world of tuberculosis control…. …which emerged for us last week out of what seemed to be otherwise a generally innocent and positive Global Fund for HIV TB and Malaria’s annual report for 2022. It provided information on the current annual state of play with the fight against these three scourges. ’50 million lives saved’ the Report trumpets as its headline, which certainly sounds like something to reasonably be triumphant about. Further on, however, it identifies more details of‘the State of the Fight’ in relation to each o ..read more

Today (March 24th, 2022) marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced that he'd discovered the bacterium that causes TB. It was a milestone event that opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease. If only this had actually happened as he’d hoped it would. What’s happening with TB today? TB has been tragically but correctly described as ‘the everlasting pandemic in plain sight’, and the WHO's press release for this World TB Day states that still “every day, over 4,100 people die from TB and nearly 30,000 people fall ill – despite it being both preventable and treatable.” In ..read more

With great sadness we have just learnt of the death of Dr Paul Farmer yesterday in Rwanda. Dr Farmer (or ‘Dr Paul’ as he was much better known by his patients) was an extraordinary physician. He was not just any old extraordinary doctor though (as if that weren’t enough), he was also a global expert in infectious disease (including HIV and TB), a medical anthropologist, a founder of Partners in health, a spokesperson for the poor, a constant warrior against racism, a valiant campaigner for social justice, and an inspiration to a generation of qualifying doctors. He wrote extraordinary books ab ..read more

This has been an immensely difficult piece to write - which is why this sad announcement is now two months overdue. Several weeks ago in early September we were contacted from Uganda telling us that Dorothy Nabuule had died. We first met Dorothy (while training her to teach her patients how to use moxa) during our second trip to Uganda in 2010. Soon afterwards we were told she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and (truth be told) we didn't think we'd ever see her again. But when the Ugandan moxa-TB RCT started in Kampala two years later she miraculously resurfaced, specially selected as par ..read more