The United Kingdom (UK) has committed an additional £41.7 million to help fight the burden of tuberculosis (TB) in India. The new funds come in addition to the UK's recent doubling of its contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria (GFATM), to £100 million per year for 2006 and 2007. The World Health Organisation and Stop TB Partnership will administer the funds in the country.

The latest DFID funding for India is to help procure anti-TB drugs which will directly benefit over four million TB patients in the country. It will also support a five year plan to provide technical support through the WHO to the Government of India's revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP).

According to an official release, a new £5 million DFID fund for research into health policy and systems that work to the benefit of the poor, often utilising simple solutions, is also separately awarded to the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, a network working under the WHO umbrella. Currently just 5% of research conducted worldwide on health policy and systems focuses on the problems of low and middle income countries and many simple life saving technologies remain inaccessible to poor populations there.

With 1.8 million new TB patients every year, accounting for one fifth of all cases worldwide, India has the greatest number of people infected with the disease in the world and it continues to kill more people there than any other infectious cause of death.

The UK contributes to TB control through advocacy at country level, strengthening health services, through funding of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria (GFATM), and through our core funding to WHO and to the Stop TB Partnership.

The GFATM provides 66% of external funding for TB. In September, the UK doubled its contribution to the fund for 2006 and 2007, and will provide £100 million in each year. In March 2005 the UK committed £5 million over three years to the Stop TB Partnership.

The Stop TB Partnership estimates an estimated $56 billion over the next decade will be needed to help tackle TB. It believes that 40% of the additional funding needs to come from G8 countries and other donors.

The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research incorporates a partnership of developing country researchers and research users, helps build country capacity to conduct research, and supports the development of new knowledge, knowledge synthesis, and its application to policy. It is an initiative originally fostered by Global Forum for Health Research and now administered by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Global Forum.