To estimate the prevalence of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) in China, we retrospectively analyzed drug-resistance profiles of 989 clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates. We found 319 (32.3%) isolates resistant to ≥1 first-line drugs; 107 (10.8%) isolates were multidrug resistant, of which 20 (18.7%) were XDR. XDR TB is of major concern in China.

Since 2008, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has been collecting data from the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) on resistance to first- and second-line drugs against tuberculosis (TB). In 2008, the proportion of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) was 6.0% of the total case load for 25 countries reporting data. Extensively drug-resistant (XDR TB) ...

The threat of global infectious agents has the potential to cripple national and global economies, as the outbreaks of SARS, Avian Flu, H1N1, and XDR-TB have demonstrated. This article offers a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of one public health case study - the Speaker case of XDR-TB - pinpointing the underlying causal relationships associated with this global health incident and proposing recommen...

Framework Action Plan to fight tuberculosis in the European Union 2 PREFACE The European Union's (EU) Health Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, called on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in March 2007 to develop a proposal for an action plan to fight tuberculosis (TB) in the EU 1. This initiative reflects the priority given to TB in the EU where this disease is a conti...