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.
