Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We have just left a century of extraordinary progress in health, and much of this progress is the fruits of science. Yet, we also carry over a legacy of unsolved problems, and tuberculosis is ranging among the most serious and devastating.

Still, nearly two million people die from tuberculosis every year. The misery and mortality caused by tuberculosis is enormous and, the disease is a major brake on social and economic development. Together with malaria and HIV/AIDS, it makes up a trio of infectious diseases where the effects on developing countries are so damaging that they seriously impede economic and social development.

This is why world leaders have made the fight against these three diseases a priority. In March, governments from the 20 countries most seriously affected by TB acknowledged its effects on development and pledged to make the fight against TB a priority on their national policy agendas. In July, the G8 leaders committed to targets to drastically reduce the disease burden, which includes cutting the death toll from TB in half within ten years. Last month, the European Commission drew up a policy framework for how to help meet those targets. In Okinawa in December, the G8 countries are again meeting to discuss the strategy and the resources needed.

In 1995 WHO and its partners developed the DOTS strategy, a comprehensive way of delivering TB treatment for all patients to ensure completion of the full course needed. DOTS has since become one of the most cost-effective health measures available to developing countries. Introducing and effectively carrying out DOTS in all endemic countries would go a long way towards meeting the goal of cutting TB by half within 10 years.

But it is not enough.

Nearly 30 years have passed since the introduction of a new compound to treat TB. It is now high time to find new and more effective drugs.

The world's poorest nations need new drugs that will allow the DOTS treatment to be much shorter and which require less supervision of patients by health workers. Through concerted efforts we may develop a drug that could shorten the course to two months or even less. Control services could then shift scarce resources from the costly and labour-intensive observed treatment to, for example, buying more drugs. A new drug that would reduce both the total length of treatment and the frequency of drug administration would represent an enormous breakthrough.

We will also need new drugs to combat the rising threat of multi-drug resistant TB. At present patients with MDR-TB must be treated with significantly more expensive, more toxic and less effective "second-line" TB drugs. If resistance develops to these drugs as a result of poor control strategies, tuberculosis will become virtually incurable.

However, there is hope. Science can now design new drugs specifically to attack resistant forms of TB by identifying targets and synthesising compounds able to attack them.

The treatment of latent TB infection is a third reason for accelerating development of new TB drugs. Of the 2 billion persons latently infected in the world, 100 million will develop active TB during their lifetimes - and many more, if HIV continues to spread. Further research is needed to define the policies and strategies required, but more effective treatment of latent infection raises the prospect of rapid elimination of TB in low prevalence countries

WHO has made TB a priority. But WHO cannot succeed alone. We have set up and strengthened the STOP TB Initiative to build the coalition of partners, who together can control TB. To succeed, we must pursue the goal of developing new drugs.

In February, the Rockefeller Foundation brought together a number of scientists, officials and executives from both private and public sector in South Africa to discuss how we can bridge this gap. Less than nine months later, we meet here in Bangkok to launch the Global Alliance for Anti-TB Drug Development. This is truly impressive. It could not have been achieved without the generous financial contribution by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the drive and financial commitment made by the Rockefeller Foundation. For this, we are truly grateful.

The challenge is to improve the quality and efficacy of drugs. In this context, GADD is much more than a scientific venture: it is a direct attack on poverty and the disparities between rich and poor.

It is also a contribution to economic development. Healthy people are more able to work themselves out of poverty and to generate the activities that promote the human and economic development that ultimately will enrich us all.

We owe it to the millions who suffer from TB to make GADD the success I am confident it will become. Let all of us here today do our part to make it happen.