The University of Otago's Centre for International Health has
gained a $540,000 grant to pursue research which could help
eliminate tuberculosis worldwide.
Centre director, Prof Philip Hill is "very pleased" the
centre has received its largest single grant since it was
established in early 2008.
Early last year, Prof Hill warned a global strategy to
eliminate Tb by 2050 would not succeed unless more could be
done to prevent infection progressing to disease.
The funding, from Canada, enables the Otago centre to join a
major global trial studying the effectiveness of a new
treatment approach, involving the drug rifampin, for the
latent form of Tb.
The study covers 6500 latently-infected people in six
countries, including Canada, Brazil, and Australia.
The funds will enable centre researchers and their
collaborators at the University of Padjadjaran, in Indonesia,
to run an arm of the clinical trial in Bandung, Indonesia.
A $47,000 charitable grant from Mercy Hospital, Dunedin, had
enabled an Otago centre Research Fellow, Merrin Rutherford,
to continue her Tb-related research in Indonesia until the
Canadian grant had been gained, he said.
She would help to co-ordinate the Indonesian part of the
trial.
The World Health Organisation estimates that about one-third
of the world's population are carriers of latent Tb.
These carriers show no symptoms and are not contagious, but
can develop active Tb at any time.
It is estimated there are 8 million new active cases each
year with 2 million people dying from the disease.
The clinical trial is being led by the Research Institute of
the McGill University Health Centre in Canada and funded by
the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
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