DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- An ambitious plan to prevent 14 million deaths from tuberculosis in the next decade waslaunched at the World Economic Forum on Friday.

    Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledged to commit 600 million U.S.dollars to the fight against the epidemic in the next 10 years,especially on TB-related research and development. The Gates Foundation has so far spent 300 million dollars on the disease.

    Gates said new tools are needed to control the disease as the current treatment regimen takes at least six months to complete and about 300,000 cases are drugs-resistant every year.

    The plan, drawn up by Stop TB Partnership, a global initiative supported by more than 400 organizations worldwide, aims to treat 50 million TB cases by 2015.

    It also envisages new drugs by 2010, new effective diagnostic tools by 2012 and a new vaccine by 2015.

    Gates together with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown launched the initiative at Davos.

    "Every 15 seconds somebody dies of TB, avoidably, preventably,"Brown told a press conference.

    He asked the Group of Eight most industrialized countries to designate TB a priority at the July summit.

    Obasanjo said the fight against TB is also a priority for Africa."The global plan is fundamental for Africa, where tuberculosis was declared an emergency by 46 countries in 2005," he told the same press conference.

    If this plan is successful, the UN Millennium Develop Goal to halt the spread of TB by 2015 and begin to reverse the incidence of TB will be met.

    The ultimate goal, said Marcus Espinal, executive of Stop TB Partnership, is to make the world free of TB by 2050.

    The plan costs about 56 billion dollars over the next 10 years,and 31 billion dollars in addition to the currently projected funding are needed. Enditem