Giving Compass' Take:

• The UK-based charity Wellcome details the fight against tuberculosis, highlighting recent medical research that could put a vaccine within reach. But more resources and political willpower will be needed to end the disease.

• What are the roles of nonprofits and international aid organizations in this effort? How can they spur more action toward advancing the knowledge we have about TB and getting treatment to those who need it most?

• Here's more on how we can outsmart TB through research and global collaboration.

Momentous. There is no better word to describe news of scientific breakthroughs announced against the world’s biggest infectious killer — tuberculosis.

Every day it takes almost 5,000 lives. It is staggering that 136 years since German microbiologist Robert Koch discovered the bacteria responsible for TB, none of the world’s 195 countries have eradicated this devastating disease.

But now, thanks to the prodigious efforts of two international research teams, two critical milestones have been reached:

  • results of promising clinical trials of a new candidate vaccine
  • a major study sequencing 10,000 TB genomes from patients across 16 countries — work key to the rapid drug sensitivity testing needed to stop the rise and spread of drug-resistant strains of TB.

When Koch, at the time a German government health adviser, published his TB findings he opened the way to the diagnosis and cure of a disease dating back to ancient civilizations.

But TB has proved tough and adaptable. Advances to treat and prevent it have not kept pace. There have been only two new drugs in the last 50 years and though, in theory, TB is treatable, patients face a best-guess regime of months of hundreds of pills. For those with resistant TB, treatment lasts up to two years.

And of 10 million new cases every year, 4 million are undiagnosed and untreated.

Read the full article about trying to eradicate tuberculosis by Jeremy Farrar at Wellcome.