Tuberculosis Can Go If We Care

"Four people die every minute somewhere in the world from tuberculosis. The ancient disease killed almost 2 million people last year . . . More HIV-infected people die from tuberculosis than from any other opportunistic infection because it thrives when immune systems are impaired.

"Tuberculosis is largely a disease of poor people . . . The problems that diseases cause will only worsen in a time of global economic slowdown. A form of tuberculosis that is resistant to almost all known drugs is spreading in Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union, as well as throughout the developing world.

"Yet the fight against tuberculosis demonstrates what an effective public health approach can do. For a decade now, the World Health Organization and the World Bank have been working together to help some of the most populous countries in the world, including China and India, to scale up their tuberculosis control programs . . . Cure rates in both those countries have improved dramatically . . . The drug therapy costs as little as $10 for a six-month course of treatment.

"In 1998, a global alliance was set up to muster all available forces to reverse the tuberculosis epidemic -- the Stop TB Partnership . . . Thanks to the commitment of many partners, including the international financier George Soros, a Global Plan to Stop TB is being launched at the World Bank in Washington . . . It shows that those countries with the highest incidence of the disease are already investing the lion's share of worldwide commitments for tuberculosis control today.

"If the global community could raise an additional $900 million annually, deaths from tuberculosis could fall dramatically within a decade, and the disease could disappear during the lifetime of today's children. But we must speed up, urgently. . . We are on the right path, but the funding gap for this effort needs to be filled."

Brundtland is director-general of the World Health Organization. Wolfensohn is president of the World Bank.

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