Global tuberculosis partnership says industrialized world must do more.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has unveiled a new blueprint to halve the 1.8 million deaths caused by tuberculosis (TB) each year but says it needs an additional US$14 billion from industrialized world over the next five years to achieve that target. The Global Plan to Stop TB 2011 — 2015: Transforming the Fight — Towards Elimination of Tuberculosis, announced simultaneously at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany, and in Johannesburg, South Africa, proposes to increase tuberculosis spending to US$47 billion from the US$36 billion that the Stop TB Partnership had originally projected it would need over that five-year period to limit TB mortality rates. WHO estimates that nine million new cases of TB are still being diagnosed each year. The US$11-billion increase is largely a function of the partnership’s plan to persuade the industrialized world to discontinue their “deceleration” of TB research and development, so as to develop new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. The plan proposes to spend US$9.8 billion over the next five years to entice more researchers back into the field (www.stoptb.org/assets /documents/global/plan/TB_GlobalPlan ToStopTB2011-2015.pdf). It also proposes to increase funding for TB treatment to US$36 billion over the five-year period, including US$22.6 billion to treat new TB patients, US$7.1 billion to treat patients with drug-resistant TB, US$2.8 billion to treat HIV patients with TB, $US4 billion to strengthen laboratory capacity within the 22 “high-burden” countries that account for 80% of the world’s TB cases, and US$400 million on administration. United Nations Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis and former president of Portugal Jorge Sampaio told the summit that after taking into account current TB spending commitments, “there will be a gap of US$14 billion for implementation, and some US$10 billion for research and development.” Sampaio argued that emerging economic powers, particularly those with a high incidence of TB, and “rich oil producers” had to make a greater contribution to the global TB effort and thus, “strengthen solidarity between