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The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a new strategy on Friday to expand its existing tuberculosis (TB) programmes and prevent HIV/AIDS co-infection.
WHO's ambitious plan hopes to raise US $56 billion to achieve the goals of providing high-quality medical services in the world's poorest areas and promoting research for new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines against TB.
However, top officials warned that it would take greater collaboration between TB and AIDS programmes for the new 'Stop TB Strategy' to succeed.
"We must involve a much broader array of actors in TB control and adapt DOTS [Directly Observed Treatment Short-course for TB] to HIV co-infection, multi-drug resistant TB and other special challenges if we're going to achieve the 2015 targets of the Global Plan," said Dr Marcos Espinal, executive secretary of the strategy.
WHO's DOTS campaign includes free medication and treatment for six months at all government hospitals, while the Global Plan - launched in January - is a $56 billion initiative to halve TB prevalence and deaths, with the aim of saving 14 million lives by 2015.
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