USAid cuts could create untreatable TB bug ‘resistant to everything we have’

Dangerous new forms of tuberculosis (TB) for which there is no treatment could emerge as a result of US aid cuts, a top doctor has warned.

Dr Lucica Ditiu, who heads the Stop TB Partnership, said she feared that interruptions to people’s treatment would allow the airborne bug to mutate into a new, untreatable form.

Moreover, a lack of diagnostic services, which have also been badly affected by the Trump administration’s aid cuts, would allow TB to spread more easily, she said.

Programmes working to detect, treat and research new ways to fight TB are among nearly 10,000 health projects worldwide that received notices at the end of February that the US was terminating their funding after a review of aid spending.

The US has historically provided between $200m (£155m) and $250m a year in bilateral funding to poorer countries for their work on TB, the World Health Organization said last week, warning that “abrupt funding cuts” would “cripple TB prevention and treatment efforts, reverse decades of progress, and endanger millions of lives”.

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Source: The Independent, 10 March 2025