Eli Lilly provides WHO with tuberculosis boost

Eli Lilly has granted the World Health Organisation (WHO) $4.384 million (2.182 million pounds) in order to boost its global capacity to manage multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) programmes.

The pharmaceutical company outlines that the grant is to cover four activities which are undertaken by the WHO. These include providing assistance in the clinical management of MDR-TB programmes, running workshops to improve laboratory practices as well as supporting the training of global MDR-TB experts.

The grant will also support the field testing and evaluation of a new information system to record and report on MDR-TB rates in two countries.

Alex Azar, senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications at Eli Lilly, illustrated that drug resistance was at all time high which made the battle against MDR-TB “more important now than ever”.

“This grant represents Lilly’s continued commitment to support the WHO in its goal of treating 50 million TB patients and 1.6 million MDR-TB patients by 2015. It builds upon existing WHO and Lilly programme successes in curbing the MDR-TB pandemic,” he added.

Earlier this week, Eli Lilly announced that it had ended its development of its AIR Insulin programme which it had been conducting together with Alkermes.