TB Monitor International-Casting new light on TB

The three-day ministerial conference is titled "Confer ence on Tuberculosis and Sustainable Development." The list of invitees pointedly includes not just the usual ministers of health, but their counterparts from national development and planning sectors as well, Fussell says. The message conference organizers hope to get across is that TB isn't just a health concern, he adds; it's also a social, economic, and political issue.

"That means that access to drugs equals access to opportunity," he says. "Drugs are what get people back to work, children back to school, and parents back to their families." In addition, the conference will sound the alarm on multidrug-resistant TB, using the specter of outbreaks of incurable disease to get nations rolling on the TB problem before it's too late.