For Immediate Release
For more information:
Beverly Dame, 301-762-3100, [email protected]
"Tuberculosis Report a Wake-Up Call for America"
Rockville, MD (May 4, 2000). The head of the nation's only nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to new approaches to the worldwide tuberculosis epidemic calls today's report from the National Academy of Sciences, "a fire alarm in the night for America's leaders in Washington and across the country." Carol A. Nacy, Ph.D., President of the Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation applauded the recommendations of the NAS Committee on the Elimination of Tuberculosis in the United States, especially its emphasis on new funding for research.
"America has been sleeping while the rest of the world faced a global tuberculosis epidemic. We were lulled into complacency when TB stopped being a threat to us. Unfortunately, the TB bacillus did not disappear from the rest of the world. Today, we face the results of decades of neglect of TB research."
Nacy pointed out that the tools to deal with tuberculosis are woefully out of date. "The only vaccine available was developed more than 80 years ago. It is largely ineffective against adult TB, even if it is some help against the most severe form of childhood TB. The diagnostic tools " the tuberculin skin test, x-ray, and bacterial cultures " have changed very little in decades. And multi-drug resistant TB has developed to escape the current drug arsenal. Clearly, we need new tools to deal with what my colleague William Jacobs has called "the most successful pathogen on the planet."
"$280 million is a good beginning," said Nacy. "What is truly needed is a renewed recognition that a disease that killed millions in the past is killing millions more people in the present."
The Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation is a private nonprofit medical research institution dedicated to helping researchers find new tools " vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics " to deal with the global tuberculosis epidemic. It is funded, in part, by a grant from the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.
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