Drug-Resistant TB: Surveillance and Response Supplement to the Global Tuberculosis Report 2014

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) represents a growing threat to global public health and security. New resistance mechanisms continue to emerge and spread, undermining the world’s ability to treat common infectious diseases. Surveillance to monitor the emergence and spread of drug resistance is a crucial component of the global strategy to combat AMR.

This special supplement to the Global Tuberculosis Report 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the Global Project on Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Surveillance and its TB Supranational Reference Laboratory Network. It remains the oldest and largest project on AMR surveillance in the world and guides the response to the epidemic of multidrugresistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) at national and global levels.

The first half of the document highlights the progress made in surveillance of anti-TB drug resistance between 1994 and 2013 as well as recent innovations. The second half of the document profiles the global status of the response to the MDR-TB epidemic, which remains a mix of success and failure. Following WHO’s pronouncement in 2013 that MDR-TB represented a public health crisis, five priority areas for action, from prevention to cure, are defined.