GATESDAVOS, Switzerland (AP):
MICROSOFT CORPORATION chairman and co-founder Bill Gates said yesterday that his charitable foundation will triple its funding for tuberculosis (TB) eradication, pledging another US$600 million by 2015.
The effort is part of a larger campaign announced at the World Economic Forum to stamp out tuberculosis worldwide. The disease claimed 1.6 million lives in 2005.
The announcement came as Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Britain's treasury chief Gordon Brown, along with Gates, called for help to treat 50 million people and prevent 14 million TB deaths globally in the next 10 years.
"This 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," Gates told reporters.
The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis was formed by the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, a group of 400 organisations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation already has given US$300 million to the fight against the disease.
PRESS G8 FOR HELP
Britain also said Friday it would give US$ 74 million to fight tuberculosis in India.
"If 2005 was the year of commitments, 2006 must be the year of delivery," Brown said. "That's why, when the G8 finance ministers meet in Moscow in only a few days time, I will put on the agenda how we can meet the commitments to fund this specific plan." Brown also said he would propose to the G8 ministers expanding a debt relief agreement made last year to some of the world's poorest nations.
To fully implement the plan will cost an estimated US$56 billion over the next decade _ US$47 billion for tuberculosis control and US$9 billion for research and development _ said Marcos Espinal, executive secretary of the partnership.
"Based on current funding trends, the plan estimates at least 40 per cent of the additional funding needs to come from the G-8 and other donor countries, while the remaining 60 per cent should come from the governments of tuberculosis-affected countries," he said.
