A $9.3 Billion Proposal Outlines Global Campaign Against TB

World Health Organization (WHO) officials, together with businessman George Soros, have developed a plan that says $9.3 billion is needed in the next five years to significantly reduce the incidence of TB. Unlike still-developing global efforts to battle HIV/AIDS and malaria, the TB plan has detailed blueprints on how to attack the deadly bacterium in each of the 20 countries with the highest TB caseload.

Health and finance officials will meet in Washington, D.C., today and tomorrow to put the final touches on the plan. They had talked about canceling the meeting in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, but decided to go ahead as scheduled. "The show much go on," said J.W. Lee, WHO's top TB control official. "We're talking about 2 million people dying a year from TB. Before Sept. 11, many people thought that a $9 billion plan was impossible. But Sept. 11 proved money is not the issue. The issue is political will. So if the world wants to fight TB, the world will do it. Sept. 11 changed the whole paradigm of how we look at things."

Michael Vachon, spokesperson for Open Society Institute chair Soros, also said the Sept. 11 attacks "make it even more important that we pursue some kind of reform" in the developing world. "The inequities bred by globalization allow people like Osama bin Laden to draw people to their causes. Eliminating poverty isn't going to get rid of terrorism, but it will make it harder for these people to exist," Vachon said.

The plan calls for about $900 million a year for five years from wealthy countries. Developing countries are to pay the remaining costs. Soros will propose that the International Monetary Fund oversee the new fund. In 1999, 23 percent of the world's 8.4 million TB patients were receiving the recommended six-month course of medication. With the additional funds, the WHO hopes to extend coverage to 70 percent of those ill with TB.

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