GROUP RECEIVES $4.7 MILLION GRANT TO FIGHT TB, HIV

The Treatment Action Group (TAG) announced it has been awarded a four-year $4.7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand its project to combat the HIV and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics. The grant will enable TAG to lead efforts to promote universal access to TB and HIV treatment by the year 2010, among other goals.

"As the recent upsurge in extremely drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) in southern Africa has shown, HIV and TB are a deadly combination, and poorly performing TB treatment programs represent a threat to HIV antiretroviral treatment scale-up programs worldwide," Javid Syed, TAG's TB/HIV Advocacy Project director, said.

TAG will coordinate TB/HIV advocacy with the Stop TB Partnership and the UN to improve TB/HIV policy and scale up collaborative TB/HIV activities.

"What has become clear from the first years of TAG's TB/HIV Project supported by the Gates Foundation is that much greater collaboration and program integration are needed to control HIV-related TB, and that the world needs to at least triple its investment in TB research and development in order to discover and develop the new tools -- diagnostics, drugs and vaccines -- necessary to control and ultimately to eliminate TB," TAG Executive Director Mark Harrington said.