1. 22 March 2012 Europe and ACP together against tuberculosis European Parliament, Rue Wiertz 60 BRUSSELS Charles S Mgone EDCTP Executive Director

2. The global burden of tuberculosis A third of the global population i.e. over 2 billion people are infected with the organism that causes TB 10% of the infected individuals eventually develop TB disease in their lifetime with around 9.5 million news cases and 2 million deaths occurring each year Drug resistance and HIV adds to the burden Lack of effective and adequate tools for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the disease exacerbates the problem

3. Working in partnerships through EDCTP Participating European Member States Sub-Saharan African Countries European Commission International Development Partners PDPs Pharma/SMEs Coordination of national programmes Partnerships with high- burdened countries Capacity development and networking Synergy among R&D international partners EDCTP

4. The EDCTP partnership Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Cameroon Congo Cote d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of Congo Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guinea-Conakry Kenya Liberia Madagascar Malawi Mali Mozambique Namibia Nigeria Rwanda Senegal South Africa Sudan Tanzania The Gambia Togo Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom EDCTP-EEIG member states Sub-Saharan African countries

5. TB diagnostics and biomarkers Simple, accurate and efficient tools for diagnosing TB, especially at the point of care are lacking Diagnosis in children and HIV-infected individuals is problematic Vaccine studies are handicapped by the lack of correlates of immune protection There is therefore an urgent need to invest in research on new diagnostics and biomarkers that will help us to accurately diagnose TB and understand better immunity against the disease

6. Vaccines development BCG – the current vaccine in use since 1921 is far from ideal Newer vaccines are emerging along the pipeline with EDCTP through North-South partnerships funding several phase II clinical trials of some of them There is a need to rationally plan phase III trials in terms of the clinical trials designs and funding

7. TB treatment The current TB treatment regimens require long periods from start to cure and are cumbersome requiring patients to take many pills This often results in poor adherence to treatment, which in turn encourages drug resistance

8. TB treatment clinical trials Drug sensitive TB Shortening and simplification of the current treatment regimens (The Pan-African Consortium for Evaluation of Anti- tuberculosis Antibiotics – PanACEA): 11 African, 10 European institutions + Global TB Alliance, Sequella, Bayer, BMGF HIV/TB co-infection Treatment optimisation Safety profiling Drug resistant TB Nearly 0.5 million cases world-wide (China, India, Russian Federation contributing 50% of the cases)

9. Capacity development and networking National Regulatory Authorities and Ethics Review Committees support Personnel training (Long- and short-term) Research infrastructure support Clinical trial sites upgrade Laboratory improvements/accreditation Policy, governance and health systems strengthening

10. Thank you http://www.edctp.org