Gates pledges $900 million to combat TB |
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Sun, 29 Jan 2006 02:05
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DAVOS, Switzerland: Bill Gates has offered $900 million in funding to combat tuberculosis, marking the launch of a $31 billion funding drive against the disease.
The disease which is known to kill one person every 15 seconds has spread alarmingly in African countries, where it is one of the main killers of HIV/AIDS-infected people.
Gates told newspersons at the World Economic Forum that tuberculosis is a very tough disease. "It is going to take all of us -- private sector, the pharmaceutical companies, philanthropy and governments in countries that have the disease -- to participate as well."
The money will be given to the Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis, formed by the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, a group of 400 organisations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation already contributes $300 million to help fight the disease and Gates said the amount would reach $900 million by 2015.
At the World Economic Forum, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and British finance minister Gordon Brown called on world leaders to assist the new World Health Organization action plan, which targets 50 million affected people, and prevent 14 million deaths worldwide over the next 10 years.
WHO is hopeful of fully controlling the disease, but the total implementation of the project is estimated to cost around $56 billion in the next 10 years -- including $47 billion for controlling the disease and $9 billion for research into new drugs and vaccines. This is an increase of $31 billion over present funding projection.
It is estimated that most of the two million people who die of the disease each year live in the developing world. According to projections, the disease will infect more than 1 billion people by 2020, killing 36 million a year unless effective medicines and treatment processes are invented and applied. More effective therapies are the need of the hour, according to WHO, as the strains New strains of the bacilli are becoming resistant to existing drugs and vaccines are proving to be less effective in preventing the disease.
Brown said he would present the funding case to the G8 finance ministers' meeting in Moscow in February. Britain has pledged 41.7 million pounds to tackle tuberculosis in India, where an one third of all TB cases exist, with 1.8 million new cases occurring a year.
Obasanjo said tuberculosis should be a priority for African leaders. He plans to host a meeting of African heads of state in May, where the issue will be taken up for discussion.
WHO is now pursuing its Dots strategy, where TB patients on the six-month treatment are encouraged to take their drugs in front of a healthcare worker to ensure compliance. The strategy is central to the new Stop TB plan, and friends, family and even shopkeepers are being employed to make sure patients are taking their drugs.
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