TB REPORTS & RESOURCES

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Find more TB resources on our website page ‘TB Resources’!​

​​​​​Stop TB USA: Where we unite to #EndTB!

Invite a friend to sign up to receive the TB Wire and be a part of Stop TB USA!


​Consider donating: Make a check out to NTCA (our fiscal home) with “Stop TB USA donation” in the memo line.

Send to PO Box 260288, Atlanta, GA 31126

ANNOUNCEMENTS



Other Opportunities: 

programs.
-FDA updated its Drug Shortage Reportto include isoniazid (INH)on 05/23/23.View the report here.2023-2024 TEA Mini-Grant Program RFP and Information Session Open Now!Applications dueJune 16th, 2023.
-CDC recently published a“Dear Colleague Letter”addressing reported drug shortage challenges for U.S. TB
programs.
-FDA updated its Drug Shortage Reportto include isoniazid (INH)on 05/23/23.View the report here.2023-2024 TEA Mini-Grant Program RFP and Information Session Open Now!Applications dueJune 16th, 2023.
-CDC recently published a“Dear Colleague Letter”addressing reported drug shortage challenges for U.S. TB
programs.
-FDA updated its Drug Shortage Reportto include isoniazid (INH)on 05/23/23.View the report here.2023-2024 TEA Mini-Grant Program RFP and Information Session Open Now!Applications dueJune 16th, 2023.
-CDC recently published a“Dear Colleague Letter”addressing reported drug shortage challenges for U.S. TB
programs.
-FDA updated its Drug Shortage Reportto include isoniazid (INH)on 05/23/23.View the report here.

2023-2024 TEA Mini-Grant Program RFP and Information Session Open Now!Applications dueJune 16th, 2023.
-CDC recently published a“Dear Colleague Letter”addressing reported drug shortage challenges for U.S. TB
programs.
-FDA updated its Drug Shortage Reportto include isoniazid (INH)on 05/23/23.View the report here.2023-2024 TEA Mini-Grant Program RFP and Information Session Open Now!Applications dueJune 16th, 2023.
-CDC recently published a“Dear Colleague Letter”addressing reported drug shortage challenges for U.S. TB
programs.
-FDA updated its Drug Shortage Reportto include isoniazid (INH)on 05/23/23.View the report here.

TB ETN and TB PEN Conference Recap


The CDC’s Division of Tuberculosis Elimination hosted the 2024 Tuberculosis Education and Training Network (TB ETN) and Tuberculosis Program Evaluation Network (TB PEN) Conference on September 17–19, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. At the conference, TB program staff expanded their understanding of TB education, training, and program evaluation through a variety of TB education and skills-building activities. Speakers shared information about TB learning opportunities and highlighted education and training efforts at local, state, and international levels.

TB IN THE NEWS


TB Incidence Reports: 


TB Articles:


Read lots more TB news on our website page  ‘From TB Wire’!

DC UPDATE

​Great news! The End TB Now Act of 2023 passed the Senate in September! Now we need to re-double our calls and emails to our House members to ask them to co-sponsor the bill and to speak with leadership to add it to the suspension calendar. 

Here are the asks for your Members of Congress:


  1. Write or speak to the Chair and Ranking member of Appropriations in favor of a minimum of $225 million for CDC’s fiscal year 2025 TB programs as TB cases increased 16% in 2023 and will continue to rise as the full impact of COVID-19 comes to bear.
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  2. Write a letter to CMS Administrator Brooks-LaSure in support of a **timely** National Coverage Determination of LTBI screening and testing.

  3. Co-sponsor the End TB Now Act, H.1776/S.288! [Here’s a helpful fact sheet and a press release about the End TB Now Act.]


Call the Capitol Switchboard at 1-202-224-3121 and ask for your senator/representative or give your state if you do not know their name. When you are connected to an office, ask for the Health Legislative Assistant. If you leave a voicemail message, include your name, phone number, and email so that they can respond. If you would like a sample script, email us at leadership@stoptbusa.org. Bonus points if you write us at leadership@stoptbusa.org and tell us how your call went!!



The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis is a factual narrative of remarkable heroism, courage, sacrifice, perseverance by a group of revolutionary Black nurses who helped to treat patients afflicted with various forms and stages of tuberculosis (TB).


The impressive feat of these nurses, however, was not without its share of adversity as it occurred during several landmark historical events that typified the late-1920s to mid-1950s: the Great Depression, World War II, and intense racial discrimination and hatred against Black Americans brought about by insidious Jim Crow laws. This created an untenable situation where the nurses were compelled to fight two battles simultaneously: one to save the lives of TB patients who were forcibly dispatched to Staten Island’s notorious Sea View Hospital to suffer in agony and become experimental guinea pigs for rudimentary surgical procedures and untested drugs; and one to be accepted and recognized as competent and qualified health professionals by their racist White neighbors, supervisors, politicians, health officials, and national medical organizations, such as the American Nurses Association (ANA). 


The author of the book, Maria Smilios, successfully revitalized the once forgotten voices of several Black nurses - most notably, Edna Sutton and Missouria Meadows-Walker - through her detailed illustrations of the untold sacrifices they made in escaping the injustices of the Jim Crow South in search of greater educational employment opportunities in New York City. The journeys of these women ultimately led them to Sea View Hospital, an overcrowded and underfunded TB sanatorium in Staten Island which bore the dubious reputation for being a contagious hotbed of disease and death. 


In addition to the riveting stories of Sutton and the other Black nurses at Sea View, The Black Angels introduces readers to a diverse and endless cast of patients: Elke (the young German woman who emigrated to the United States from Nazi Germany in search of a better life); Hilda Ali (the East Indian girl who emigrated with her family to the United States from Bengali, India; they feared being ostracized by their community due to Hilda’s TB status); Mamie Blair (the 19-year-old Black woman from Staten Island whose infection with pulmonary TB was treated with a combination of streptomycin and para-aminosalicyclic acid); the unnamed German soldier captured during World War II who constantly expressed his racial contempt for Missouri Meadows-Walker, the Black nurse assigned to care for him; and many more. Smilios’ decision to incorporate the personal stories of these and other patients into the book helped to humanize the disease, which fostered a more palpable emotional connection between the reader and these real-life patients. It also further solidified the devastating enormity of TB on both a national and global level in that, unlike the racist characters in the book, the disease indiscriminately infected people of all ages, genders, cultures, and nationalities.


Finally, the competition between scientists, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies scrambling to develop a viable cure or ‘wonder drug’ for TB uncovered a conflicting and controversial dilemma which pitted those who were motivated by corporate greed against those who genuinely wanted to treat and save lives. For instance, Dr. Irving Selikoff and Dr. Edward Robitzek, the latter of whom lost his own father to the disease, were true stalwarts of the Hippocratic oath. Their desire to discover a cure was primarily driven by a sense of altruism and a strict adherence to medical duty-based ethics. In fact, after learning about the anti-TB potential of Ro 2-3973, both men hesitated to characterize the compound as a ‘wonder drug’ since “[clinical] trials were unfinished and inconclusive, and [they] lacked data to prove that [Ro 2-3973 was] safe and effective” (p. 339). In contrast, pharmaceutical companies such as La Roche, Squibb, Bayer, and Merck were more concerned with prestige and financial gain and therefore reveled in the publicity brought about by the supposed ability of Ro 2-3973 to cure several Sea View patients of TB.  


I strongly recommend anyone who is interested in pursuing a career in the field of TB to read this book. It is a masterful re-telling of an infamous period in American history and a tragically long-forgotten period in the centuries-old history of TB that rightfully deserves to be recognized, honored, and respected. We owe a significant debt of gratitude to the Black nurses who, despite facing exorbitant amounts of racism and segregation, continued to put their lives on the line in order to bring compassion and hope to TB patients who were otherwise cast aside by society; to the TB patients who were desperate to achieve some semblance of respite from disease and therefore selflessly volunteered themselves as experimental human subjects for untested drugs, including Ro 2-3973 (which later came to be known as isoniazid (INH); and to altruistic physicians such as Drs. Selikoff and Robitzek, who courageously prioritized safety and efficacy over profit and fame, even if this decision came at the expense of their own professional careers. To fully appreciate the revolutionary discoveries and technological advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of TB that we enjoy today, we must first acknowledge, understand, and learn from the trials, tribulations, and sacrifices those nurses, physicians, and patients respectively endured for the sake of the societal good. The Black Angels helps us to accomplish just that.

-Dr. Vanessa M. Griffith, Media Work Group Member

TB Wire past issues: 2024, 2023, 2022 

TB Epidemiologic Studies Consortium (TBESC-III) Recap

The TB Epidemiologic Studies Consortium (TBESC-III) Annual Meeting took place at CDC in Atlanta, GA September 23-24. Attendees heard scientific presentations from TBESC-III partners. For more information on TBESC-III, visit: https://www.cdc.gov/tb/research/tbesc.html.

 Stop TB USA

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Stop TB USA
stoptbusa.org
leadership@stoptbusa.org
PO Box 260288, Atlanta, GA 31126 USA

October 2024


GREETINGS FROM THE CHAIR
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October is American Pharmacists Month, so we want to give a special shout out to our Pharmacy Work Group (PWG) members who, among other activities, are collaborating with CTCA’s drug shortage group. The PWG folks will be presenting a poster at the APHA conference in Minneapolis in November, so check them out if you attend! Get in touch with us (@stoptbusa) to let us know how you help to #EndTB, or if you want to get more involved in one of our great work groups!

- Cynthia A. Tschampl, PhD, Chair


​​​EVENTS, CONFERENCES, & COURSES  

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JOURNAL ARTICLES

​​Discover many more peer-reviewed articles on our website page ‘Peer-Reviewed Publications’ !

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TB BOOKSHELF

















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Directed by Hein S. Sok



The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
by Maria Smilios 
ISBN: 9780593544921