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Gates pledges $900-million to fight TB

DAVOS, Switzerland - Bill Gates pledged Friday to triple his foundation's funding for eradicating tuberculosis to a total of $900-million by 2015, and health experts at the World Economic Forum urged renewed caution against the spread of bird flu.

The funding is part of a larger campaign against TB, which killed 1.6-million people worldwide last year. Gates, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and British treasury chief Gordon Brown called for help to prevent 14-million tuberculosis deaths over the next decade. "This is a very tough disease," said Gates, the Microsoft Corp. chairman and co-founder. "It is going to take all of us - private sector, the pharmaceutical companies, philanthropy and governments in countries that have the disease - to participate as well."

The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis was formed by the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, a group of 400 organizations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation now gives $300-million to help fight the disease, and Gates said the amount would reach $900-million by 2015.

Britain said it would commit $74-million to fight tuberculosis in India.

U.S., IRAN OFFERED ADVICE: U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Friday called on the United States to provide Iran with nuclear reactors and urged Tehran to declare a moratorium on enriching uranium for at least eight years. ElBaradei said at a panel at the World Economic Forum that the time would enable the country to earn the confidence of the international community that it was really interested in nuclear energy.

Britain, France and Germany - which have been leading European Union efforts to get Iran to abandon uranium conversion and enrichment - succeeded in getting the International Atomic Energy Agency's board to meet Feb. 2 to discuss action against Iran. The three countries - and the United States - want Iran to be referred to the U.N. Security Council.

MCCAIN SPEAKS ON GITMO: Interrogation techniques at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay are still of concern and the cases of the prisoners - some of whom have been held for four years without charge - should be processed, Sen. John McCain told the Associated Press on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

[Last modified January 27, 2006, 20:29:02]