Press Release
27 January 2006
Obasanjo, Brown And Gates Call on World Leaders
to Fund New Plan to Stop Tuberculosis
$31 billion funding
increase needed to prevent 14 million
tuberculosis deaths by 2015
Gates Foundation
pledges to triple tuberculosis funding over next
decade
The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis
(2006-2015) – released today by the Stop
Tuberculosis Partnership, a coalition of more than
400 organizations worldwide – calls for global
tuberculosis spending to triple over the next
decade to increase access to tuberculosis control
programmes and accelerate research on new tools to
fight the disease.
Chancellor Brown called for the G8 to formally
designate tuberculosis a top priority at its next
meeting in July, and urged G8 member countries to
pledge immediate new funding to implement the
Global Plan.
“I welcome the Gates Foundation’s announcement
today. For far too long, world leaders have
ignored the global tuberculosis epidemic, even as
it causes millions of needless deaths each year,”
Chancellor Brown said. “Today’s plan demonstrates
that the fight against tuberculosis is one we can
win. I hope that the G8 will make fighting
tuberculosis a top priority.”
President Obasanjo said implementing the new
tuberculosis plan should be also a major priority
for African leaders. Nigeria will be hosting an
African Heads of State meeting in May, at which
tuberculosis is likely to be addressed.
“The Global Plan is fundamental for Africa,
where tuberculosis was declared an emergency by 46
countries in 2005,” Obasanjo said. “We hope the
African Union will endorse this plan, and call
upon African governments to commit their share of
the resources needed to implement it.”
Fully implementing the Global Plan would cost
an estimated $56 billion over the next decade –
including $47 billion for tuberculosis control and
$9 billion for research and development – an
overall increase of $31 billion over currently
projected funding. Based on current funding
trends, the plan estimates at least 40% of the
additional funding needs to come from the G8 and
other donor countries, while the remaining 60%
should come from the governments of
tuberculosis-affected countries.
Gates Foundation Pledges to Triple
Tuberculosis Funding
To help achieve the plan’s goals, Bill Gates
announced that the Gates Foundation will triple
its funding for tuberculosis over the next decade,
with a focus on supporting research and
development. To date, the foundation has committed
more than $300 million for tuberculosis. Today’s
pledge will take this total to more than $900
million by 2015.
“This plan makes a compelling case for greater
investment in tuberculosis,” said Gates. “We’re
willing to triple our funding for tuberculosis,
and we urge others to do the same. If we have the
chance to save 14 million lives, and a clear plan
to make it happen, we have an obligation to act.”
Gates emphasized that new tools are urgently
needed to fight tuberculosis – the current
treatment regimen for tuberculosis takes at least
six months to complete, and approximately 300,000
cases of tuberculosis every year are resistant to
multiple tuberculosis drugs.
New Plan to Provide Tuberculosis Treatment
to 50 Million People in 10 Years, Help Achieve
MDGs
Full funding of the new Global Plan announced
today will help achieve the Millennium Development
Goal to have “halted by 2015 and begun to reverse
the incidence of tuberculosis”. Key objectives of
the plan include the following:
- Improve treatment access – prevent 14
million tuberculosis deaths and provide
treatment to 50 million people.
- New drugs – develop and distribute
the first new tuberculosis treatment regimen in
nearly 40 years.
- New vaccine – develop a safe and
affordable vaccine to improve upon the existing
vaccine, which has been in use since the early
1900s.
- New diagnostics – develop efficient,
effective and affordable diagnostic tests for
tuberculosis – the first in more than a century.
“We have a unique historic opportunity to stop
tuberculosis, but we must act now,” said Dr. Marcos
Espinal, Executive Secretary of the Stop
Tuberculosis Partnership. “The challenge now is
for people to work together in putting the plan
into action, in order to stop one of the oldest
and most lethal diseases known to humanity. This
plan tells the world exactly what we need to do in
order to defeat this global killer.”
Dr Espinal noted that the plan will build upon
important progress against tuberculosis over the
past several years. Since 2000, estimated spending
on tuberculosis control in the 22 hardest-hit
countries has increased from US$800 million to
US$1.2 billion; as a result, the number of
patients receiving tuberculosis treatment in these
countries more than doubled.
The Plan will be implemented based on a new
Stop Tuberculosis Strategy developed by the World
Health Organization (WHO), which houses the Stop
Tuberculosis Partnership. The strategy has six key
elements: optimizing and sustaining access to the
existing tuberculosis treatment and control
strategy – known as DOTS; adapting DOTS to respond
to challenges such as HIV/AIDS and Multi-Drug
Resistant Tuberculosis; strengthening health
systems; partnering and engaging with all care
providers; empowering patients and communities to
fight tuberculosis; and promoting research and
development for new drugs, diagnostics and
vaccines.
- ENDS -
About The Stop TB Partnership:
The Stop TB Partnership was established in 2000 to
realize the goal of eliminating tuberculosis (TB)
as a public health problem and, ultimately, to
obtain a world free of TB. It comprises a network
of international organizations, countries, donors
from the public and private sectors, governmental
and nongovernmental organizations and individuals
that have expressed an interest in working
together to achieve this goal. Its secretariat is
hosted by the World Health Organization in Geneva.
For further information on the Stop TB Partnership
or the Global Plan to Stop TB, please go to
www.stoptb.org or contact the communications
adviser - Michael Luhan at
luhanm@who.int or +41
(0) 22 791 1379.
About the Global Health Initiative of the
World Economic Forum
The goal of the Global Health Initiative (GHI) of
the World Economic Forum is to facilitate and
stimulate greater business engagement in the fight
against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.
To achieve this goal, the GHI works closely with
the World Economic Forum's member companies as
well as UNAIDS, the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS,
TB and Malaria and the World Health Organization's
Stop TB and Roll Back Malaria partnerships. A
broad range of NGOs and other members of civil
society, as well as governments, have also joined
the efforts of the GHI. The GHI provides a unique
platform for dialogue, partnership and action on
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria involving both
the private and the public sector. It coordinates
a community of more than 230 companies that are
confronting similar fundamental health challenges
to their operations. In particular, the GHI
provides a forum to share experiences, to define
generally accepted standards and to act as an
advocate for the private sector. For further
information please go to
http://www.weforum.org/globalhealth
The World Economic Forum is an independent
international organization committed to
improving the state of the world by engaging
leaders in partnerships to shape global,
regional and industry agendas.
Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based
in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum
is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to
no political, partisan or national interests.
The Forum is under the supervision of the Swiss
Federal Government. (www.weforum.org).
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