Global Health Blog

Recently I was fortunate enough to travel far and wide across China (after an equally exciting trip to Russia) to understand the growing epidemic of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). China suffers from the world’s second largest TB epidemic, after India, with approximately 1.4 million new TB patients, and 140,000 TB-related deaths each year.

Making the rounds this week is an AP story on mismanagement of funds in some grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. It’s an important topic: particularly in this economic climate, the question of whether aid is actually being used effectively – let alone just going to line people’s pockets – is clearly central to decisions about funding levels. The Global Fund has already been having fundraising challenges in this past round of renewals, and this clearly won’t help.