The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced its plans to grant $3 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to support research in an effort to reduce the spread of tuberculosis in AIDS infected populations in developing countries.
This grant is part of a significant contribution to combat AIDS and AIDS-related viruses by the Gates Foundation through various non-profit, research and academic organizations. The grant to Hopkins will support C.R.E.A.T.E., the Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS-Tuberculosis Epidemic, a collaboration between Hopkins Medicine, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-Kenya and several other organizations.
C.R.E.A.T.E., which will be funded to a significant extent by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hopes to achieve its goal of brainstorming, developing, and testing innovative treatments and preventative measures for TB in an estimated five to seven years. The $3 million will go towards the initial planning phase of the operation, which includes the general formation and development of the organization, the formation of standard implementations details and on-site preparations for overseas centers of operations.
Pending the completion of these preparations, the Consortium hopes to receive an additional $40 million for the next phase of the Consortium's operations.
The organization is hopeful about its chances of success but are fairly sure that sustaining their initiatives will require funding from such international organizations as the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and malaria, and the World Health Organization, for the most devastating infections that exist in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where funds for such hopeful yet expensive projects are extremely scarce.
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