 Britain, Nigeria and US software tycoon Bill Gates have unveiled a $56bn plan to prevent 14m tuberculosis deaths over the next decade.
| Good idea. Make sure you use Islamic serum, though, otherwise it's not gonna work in Nigeria. |
Speaking at the launch at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Gates committed himself to tripling his own foundation's funding against TB from $300m to a total of $900m by 2015. Mr Gates, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown urged business and political leaders to back the new programme.
| I'm wondering how much is going to be raked off by the pols and how much will actually buy treatment and immunization... |
The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis aims to increase access to control programs and spur research on new ways to fight the disease, which was declared an emergency by 46 African countries last year. Mr Brown called on the G8 to formally designate TB - which kills 5,000 people daily - a top priority at its next meeting in July. $47bn of the cost of the plan would be for control of the disease and $9bn for research and development. TB is still one of the world's deadliest diseases and campaigners say it is responsible for killing one person every 15 seconds. 15 million patients in India account for nearly one third of the world's cases. If global controls are not strengthened, an estimated 1bn people will be infected by 2020 and 36m people worldwide could die.
Few people today know how devastating the plague of TB used to be. It influenced entire generations with its unpredictable cruelty. The prospect of antibiotic-resistant strains is frightening. |