Posts By: Graham Atherton

A study of tuberculosis patients in six Jakarta hospitals has revealed up to 13% of them had fungal lung infection  – or aspergillosis – at the end of their treatment. The findings could, warn the research team from Universitas Indonesia and The University of Manchester, have implications globally wherever TB is found. The study tracked… Read more »

On World AIDS Day, experts call for global commitment towards the purchasing of diagnostic tests for Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP), a respiratory fungal infection responsible for a high proportion of deaths among HIV positive children and adults in Africa. A recent survey conducted by GAFFI assessing the availability of WHO listed essential diagnostics for fungal diseases… Read more »

An international panel of experts is calling on global health organisations like the WHO to classify Talaromycosis as a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD). Shanti Narayanasamy, working with Thuy Le at the Duke University School of Medicine, has summarised the strong arguments in favour of NTD designation in a paper in Lancet Global Health, found here… Read more »

Echinocandin antifungal drugs are the ‘workhorses’ of antifungal therapy in hospitals. The WHO has endorsed their importance by adding them to the 2021 Essential Medicines List for low and middle countries, for both adults and children.    Initially launched in 2002 in Japan and USA, micafungin (Astellas) and caspofungin (Merck) were the first to market… Read more »

GAFFI is committed to strengthening our board based on equality, diversity and inclusion of members with background from our geographical focus areas. We would appreciate, in our first step, to receive applications from female applicants with cultural background from outside Europe. Today we have a strong medical (fungal) expertise, management, marketing and HR are other… Read more »

Researchers say it is possible that increased agricultural fungicide use may be contributing to gradual azole fungal drug resistance in Aspergillus in South East Asia and around the world. Azole antifungals are the most important group for treating many fungal diseases. Resistance to azole in Aspergillus is much more prevalent in South East Asia than… Read more »

With populations of 267 and 95 million, Indonesia and DRC are the 4th and 16th most populous countries in the world. In the esteemed journal Mycoses, estimates of the incidence and prevalence of all serious fungal diseases have been conducted for the first time. In Indonesia, GAFFI Ambassador Prof Retno Wahyuningsih from Universitas Indonesia and… Read more »

Deaths rose from 16.6% to 27.3% during COVID, nearly 1 in 9 additional deaths, in Guatemala’s leading HIV centre in 2020 compared with 2019. Just published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases – Narda Medina and colleagues charted the provision of HIV care in Guatemala and how the global pandemic has affected diagnosis and… Read more »

En Guatemala, las muertes relacionadas al VIH aumentaron de 16.6% a 27.3%, durante la pandemia por COVID-19. Casi 1 de cada 9 muertes adicionales, en uno de los principales centros que atiente a estos pacientes, según lo reportado en 2020 y en comparación con 2019. Esta información ha sido recientemente publicada en la Revista Internacional… Read more »

Aspergillus, dubbed the ‘green fungus’ in India, occurs in 13.5% of severely ill hospitalised patients with COVID-19, according to Woon Chong of Albany Medical Center, New York State. Only last week, 75 weeks into the pandemic, the first cases of ‘green fungus’ were described in India, probably indicative of many missed cases. Chong and Neu… Read more »