GeneXpert Rapid TB Test Price Reduced in Historic Agreement
By Coco Jervis After months of political wrangling, in early July 2012, an agreement to reduce the price of the GeneXpert MTB/RIF rapid test for tuberculosis (TB) was reached between the manufacturer, Cepheid, and pooled purchasers UNITAID, the U.S. President's Emergency…
Getting to Zero—Join the Movement!
By Colleen Daniels Tuberculosis (TB), a 40,000-year-old disease, still devastates communities although it has been preventable—and curable—for decades. In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 8.8 million TB cases—1.4 million of them fatal—worldwide. TB is the leading cause of…
The Future of TB in the United States: Going, or Growing?
By Erica Lessem This summer, Treatment Action Group (TAG) and its partners in fighting tuberculosis (TB) issued a call for zero TB deaths, zero new TB infections, and zero suffering from TB. Yet the U.S., long a leader in TB…
Cure-Related Research at AIDS 2012
By Richard Jefferys At the recent International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. (AIDS 2012), the research effort to develop a cure for HIV infection attained a higher profile than it ever has in the past. At a press conference on…
Only Stronger U.S. Leadership Can End the AIDS Epidemic
Existing treatment and prevention techniques could prevent millions of new HIV infections and deaths from AIDS—but only if Obama sustains funding. By Mark Harrington This article was first published on 24 July 2012 in theAtlantic.com. Four years ago, President Obama's…
TAG at 20 – Part II: On a Darkling Plain—The Years of Despair
Before the Discovery of HAART By Mark Harrington And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. —Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”[i] This is the second in…
TAGline Fall 2012
AIDS Drug Assistance Program in Crisis
Over 3,500 people with HIV are on waiting lists for lifesaving antiretroviral drugs. Many more lack access because of other funding cuts and program restrictions. Congress and President Barack Obama must act now to make sure all persons with HIV…
National Institutes of Health Donates Protease Inhibitor Patent to UNITAID Medicines Patent Pool
By Mark Harrington On September 30, 2010 the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) became the first research funder to license intellectual property rights to the Medicines Patent Pool essential to manufacturing anti-HIV protease inhibitors. The patent pool is an…