Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading killer of children, particularly in resource-poor settings, though the true size of the problem is unknown. Estimates of the number of children who contract TB annually range from 300,000 up to 1 million; more than 60,000 die each year but many deaths go unreported, es

A meditation upon the memory of the birth of Jesus Christ is the need of the hour. It often surprises me that how the Anointed and Chosen one of God who asked His disciples to penetrate the spirituality into the daily life has been caged into a subjective spirituality. Lord Jesus was a spiritual rev

During the last three decades, the World Health Assembly (WHA) agreed upon two interventions, which can have far reaching and lasting impacts on global health, if implemented (and not merely endorsed) in their true spirit and letter by the member states. The first one is The International Code of Ma

This is one of the main findings of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) - a collaborative project conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington to quantify the trends in the world’s health problems. The report will be formally rele

Pope Benedict XVI is reported to have raised the question of religious freedom at a meeting with our Ambassador to the Vatican. At this meeting the Pope praised India's traditions of freedom and inter-religious harmony. Freedom of religion is the right to maintain one's religion or to change it with

December 16 comes every year to haunt the nation, particularly those few remaining who were witness to the debacle. I had the misfortune to be one. On this day the Quaid’s Pakistan, which was considered an epitome of ‘Divided we Stand’, got actually divided by breaking lose all bonds of unity betwee

….to protect every feeding mother and her infant from man-made milk as babies need only the Mom-made one. This was the theme of the 1st World breastfeeding Conference 2012 which was hosted jointly in Delhi by the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), International Baby Food Action Network

"Getting to zero: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS related deaths," is the theme for World AIDS Days between 2011 and 2015, in line with a new global vision being spearheaded by UNAIDS. Whether all countries, regardless of the size of their epidemic and level of development,

As the rich countries are still recovering from the economic depression, health financing is surely one of the casualties. Everyone rightly wants most value for every penny spent and tuberculosis care and control is one of the smart investments countries can make when purse strings tighten. That is

Well, perhaps yes. While talking to Citizen News Service - CNS at the 43rd Union World Conference on Lung Health in Kuala Lumpur Mark Harrington, Executive Director of Treatment Action Group (TAG), wondered why we are doing better in responding to HIV, which was discovered only in 1981 and for which

Dr Nils E Billo, has been Executive Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) since 1992 when it was a very small organization with just about a dozen staff and consultants, who focused on tuberculosis. During this long stint, spanning over two decades, Dr

Life expectancy is growing, and in Europe, there will be more old people. Now, a person of 70 years can still do a lot of things. But it is clear that the body deteriorates over time. They say that aging begins to manifest in many ways at 50. For example, the muscular system atrophies and its force

(Based on an exclusive interview Citizen News Service - CNS did with Dr Sirinapha Jittimanee, Public Health Officer, Tuberculosis Bureau, Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand)
Thailand is one of the 22 TB high burden countries in the world. According to the WHO Global

Words of UNAIDS Executive Director Dr Michel Sidibe which I heard first at the Stop TB Partners' Forum in 2009: 'When a virus (HIV) and a bacteria (TB) can work so well together, why can't we?,' still hold true as all countries where TB and HIV co-infection is setting off alarm bells haven't yet ful

World AIDS Day: 1st December
A new report argues that despite considerable advances in the fight against AIDS, the world is already falling behind pace in the effort to begin ending AIDS. But it doesn't have to be that way - according to the assessment in this report, the top-five critical actions