25 Mar Opinion: World TB Day Its time to make new medicines to beat old diseases
World TB Day, observed annually on March 24, commemorates the date in 1882 when German microbiologist Dr Robert Koch announced he had identified the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium. Dr Koch earned a Nobel prize for his work, but pharmaceutical researchers took another 60 years to develop the first antimicrobial drug against TB. Then, in the 1950s, newly developed antibiotics were successfully used to put TB in retreat.