UNITED NATIONS, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations has named former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio as special envoy in charge of a UN global campaign against tuberculosis, a UN spokesman said on Thursday.

    Sampaio, 66, will be responsible for financing and implementing a World Health Organization project against the disease, Stephane Dujarric, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's spokesman, said in a statement.

    Tuberculosis currently kills about 5,000 people a day across the globe, and sickens more than 8 million people a year, UN statistics show.

    The project, called Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015, was launched by the World Health Organization earlier this year with the aim to save 14 million lives over the next decade at an estimated cost of 56 billion U.S. dollars.

    Sampaio's immediate task would be to encourage world leaders to strengthen their commitment to tuberculosis control, Dujarric said.

    He will also strive to reach one of the key Millennium Development Goals, adopted at a world summit in 2000, -- to halt and begin to reverse the incidence of tuberculosis by 2015.

    Sampaio was Portuguese president from January 1996 to January 2006. Enditem