The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has stumped up $44.7m to fund research into tackling tuberculosis (TB) - the leading cause of death among HIV-positive people. The cash will be used to formulate strategies to control TB in areas of high HIV infection rates.

Foundation director Dr Helene Gayle - speaking at the 15th International AIDS conference in Bangkok - said: "We cannot successfully fight HIV/AIDS without also fighting TB, which has emerged as the leading killer of HIV-positive people. Anyone who is concerned about HIV/AIDS must also be concerned about TB, because the two diseases go hand in hand."

The grant will be allocated to three community studies over seven years in Zambia, South Africa and Brazil. The snappily-titled Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS-TB Epidemic (CREATE) will conduct the research, led by a team from Johns Hopkins University.

Gates has already contributed $82.9m towards developing a new vaccine against TB, which kills around 1.7 million people each year. His foundation's other grants include $47m to combat HIV/AIDS in India and $1m for research into Dengue Fever. ®

Bootnote

No witty emails demanding immediate funding for a programme to plug security vulnerabilities in IE6 - please.

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