New Partnerships
New agreement with the Government of Lesotho
The rapid and pernicious rise of extensively
drug-resistant tuberculosis has
rung bells of alarm in communities that
cope with infectious diseases. FIND, together
with some of its partners, has signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with the
Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of
Lesotho in which they agree to strengthen
laboratory services in the country in preparation
for the introduction of rapid culture,
drug susceptibility testing and species identification
systems.
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BD and FIND expand collaboration
Building on their two-year relationship,
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company)
(NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical
technology company, and FIND announced
on 22 March 2007 an extended collaboration
toward improving the diagnosis of
tuberculosis.
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From left to right (seated): Dr. Giorgio Roscigno,
FIND CEO and Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs,
(standing) Dr. Vinand Nantulya, FIND Senior and Policy
Implementation Officer, Joanna Rubinstein, Director Global Health
Initiative (Columbia University), Yanis Ben Amor, Tuberculosis
Coordinator, Millennium Villages Project (Earth Institute)
Partnership between FIND and Earth Institute
As part of a research project, FIND’s
Dr. Giorgio Roscigno and Jeffrey Sachs,
Director of Columbia University’s Earth
Institute, signed a Memorandum of
Understanding last month to introduce new
tools to diagnose TB in low-resource settings
identified by the Millennium Villages project.
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Demonstration trials to begin in South Africa
A Memorandum of Understanding between
FIND, the South African Medical
Research Council and the National Health
Laboratory Service was signed to undertake
large scale demonstration studies in anticipation
of the roll-out of two new tests for the
rapid diagnosis of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
The two new technologies being used
in the demonstration studies are the
FASTPlaque-Response® test from Biotec,
Ltd., and the MTBDRplus® assay from Hain
Lifescience, Gmbh, both of which permit the
presumptive diagnosis of MDR-TB in just
one to two days compared with two or more
months when using conventional culture and
drug susceptibility tests.
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