Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

The Indian Health Minister, Kaul Singh Thakur has declared that the state government will provide free antifungal medicines to below poverty line patients. Speaking at the 11th National Conference of the Society of Indian Human and Animal Mycology at Kufri, the minister said the government was committed to include the common fungal diseases component in planning,… Read more »

The following open letter has been issued by GAFFI: To the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS, Pan-American Health Organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, UNICEF, national public health agencies and governments. A recent rough estimate of disseminated histoplasmosis in AIDS is 100,000 cases worldwide and 80,000 deaths, mostly… Read more »

GAFFI has progressed its mission to reduce illness and death associated with fungal diseases worldwide during 2014/15, its second year of operation. The disabling and stigmatising fungal tropical skin disease ‘Chromoblastomycosis’ has been added to GAFFI’s five priority diseases. GAFFI’s key activities have included: ‘95-95 by 2025’ 10 year Roadmap: GAFFI has drawn up a… Read more »

 Newsweek highlighted the plight of the truly neglected disease cryptococcal meningitis last week. “Crypto, a fungal infection of the brain and spinal cord, is a threat primarily to people living with HIV/AIDS. A so-called opportunistic infection, it preys on those who lack access to the antiretroviral therapy that can keep HIV in check. Infection occurs… Read more »

The global health tragedy that is avoidable deaths from histoplasmosis, has been highlighted in the current edition of the Journal AIDS (AIDS 2016, 30:167–170). Despite a burden of ~1,600,000 HIV patients in South and Central America, most hospitals have no access to rapid diagnostic techniques and often lack the right treatment. Histoplasma capsulatum is endemic and… Read more »

The world’s first guidelines for CPA have been published in the European Respiratory Journal by the ERS in conjunction with ESCMID. The guidelines cover the important features of this disease & comprehensive treatment and recommendations  for chronic pulmonary aspergillosis (CPA). This disease is fatal in about 80% of sufferers who succumb to this illness when their lungs… Read more »

In their latest UK report on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), Lord O’Neil and colleagues call for massive restraint in the use of both antibiotics in farmed animals and azole fungicides on crops. They call for “new classes of clinical antifungals that are developed in the future should be banned from use in food production. There might… Read more »

This week, Isavuconazole (Cresemba) will become available in Europe for the first time, following its recent launch in the USA. This is the first new antifungal agent launched for 9 years. It has a broad spectrum, intravenous and oral formulations, is required only once daily and a very good safety profile. Following the FDA approval… Read more »

  At the first ‘Histoplasmosis in the Americas and the Caribbean Meeting’ in Paramaribo Suriname, representatives from Latin America shared the dramatic problems of disseminated histoplasmosis in AIDS. The histoplasmosis problem exceeds the TB problem in many regions, and dwarfs malaria (<100 deaths annually across the Americas). One in 3 or 4 new AIDS admissions… Read more »

In May 2015, GAFFI issued a call to reduce AIDS deaths to under 500,000 by 2020 by provision of fungal diagnostics and antifungal therapies (GAFFI Roadmap).  In conjunction with increasing antiretroviral therapy coverage (90-90-90-  meaning action on fungal diseases will achieve a million more HIV survivors each year by 2020), diagnostics are also required for… Read more »