The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest philanthropy organization, announced Wednesday that it would give $104 million to a non-profit organization that fights tuberculosis, a scourge in the developing world.
The money will be doled out over five years to the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development to develop new drugs to combat a disease that kills nearly 2 million people a year. The four available drugs currently used to treat the disease are all more than 40 years old and take six months to work, while many patients have tuberculosis strains that are resistant to existing treatments.
"Tuberculosis is one of the world's oldest infectious agents and has always posed challenges for the scientific community," said Dr. Peter Small of the Seattle-based Gates Foundation. "New treatments could free patients from a grueling six-month regimen and, ultimately, save millions of lives."
[Excerpt by Paul Elias, The Associated Press]
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