Micrsoft founder to treble anti-TB funding

MICROSOFT chairman and co-founder Bill Gates yesterday said his charitable foundation would triple its funding for tuberculosis eradication to $900 million (€744m) by 2015.

This is part of a larger campaign announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to stop tuberculosis worldwide.

The disease killed 1.6 million people in 2005.

The announcement came as Nigerian President Olusegun Obsanjo, British Chancellor Gordon Brown and Mr Gates called for help to treat 50 million people and prevent 14 million TB deaths in the next 10 years.

The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis was formed by the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, a group of 400 organisations.

Late in the afternoon, Hollywood star Angelina Jolie urged delegates to concentrate on the real issues.

“I just think if I can ask anything it’s for everybody in this room, including myself, to stay focused on the issues,” Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency, told the summit.

“To follow up on Darfur, to watch what is happening in the courts, to follow up on Nepal ... on Afghanistan,” she said.

Jolie uses her celebrity pulling power to draw attention to humanitarian crises.

The Oscar-winner and her beau Brad Pitt, whose child she is carrying, have reduced the global elite at Davos to star-struck autograph hunters.