Gates Foundation Announces $33M Grant to Chinese Government for Partnership To Fight Drug-Resistant TB

Bill Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday announced a $33 million partnership with the Chinese government to fight tuberculosis and curb the spread of drug-resistant TB, the Seattle Times reports. Gates made the announcement at the three-day Ministerial Meeting of High M/XDR-TB Burden Countries, which began Wednesday in Beijing. The partnership aims to show that China can control TB with better diagnostic services, improved patient monitoring and streamlined treatment regimens. The program will start with pilot projects and will expand to six provinces, the Times reports (Doughton, Seattle Times, 4/1). Chinese Health Minister Chen Zu said the project will be implemented in 20 cities over the next five years, with the goal of treating 50,000 TB patients annually (Xinhuanet, 4/1). Chen also said, "This will not only benefit TB prevention and control efforts both in China and throughout the world, but it also sets an excellent example of the partnership between government and private sectors that is widely promoted by the international community, and we hope it will accelerate the progress of reaching the United Nations Millennium Development Goals." The first half of the partnership aims to pilot test "innovative tools and delivery approaches," and the next half aims to scale up and evaluate "the most effective innovations" (Gates Foundation release, 4/1). Gates added that new tools, such as tests that can diagnose drug-resistant TB in one day, will be needed to ensure China is successful at combating drug-resistant TB. The program also will provide combination TB drugs to reduce the number of pills TB patients take, which will reduce costs and increase treatment adherence. Gates noted that few pharmaceutical companies produce combination drugs but that China's commitment to purchase such drugs will provide a financial incentive for companies to increase production. The program also will provide financial incentives to health workers to ensure TB patients adhere to treatment regimens, the Times reports. Gates said, "The alarming threat of drug-resistant TB is rising because of gaps and mistakes in the way we treat TB," he said, adding, "If we improve basic TB prevention and control, we will cut off [multi-drug resistant TB] at the source" (Seattle Times, 4/1). Gates said that China is a "perfect laboratory for large-scale testing of new tools and delivery techniques to fight TB" because of the country's "skill, its scale, its TB burden, its love of innovation and its political commitment to public health" (Wong, AP/Tacoma News Tribune, 4/1). "If China leads in the fight against TB -- developing new approaches here in China and demonstrating them to the world -- we can see a dramatic drop in the number of TB deaths in the next decade," Gates said (Seattle Times, 4/1).