The latest tropical disease research plan approved in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday and announced by WHO Friday addresses some of the emerging disease challenges facing developing countries, such as the tuberculosis-AIDS co-infection known in shorthand as TB-HIV.

The Stop TB Partnership and WHO also announced Friday a two-year plan to prevent hundreds of thousands of drug-resistant TB cases and save as many as 134,000 lives.

The tropical disease research program -- known as TDR -- builds on the U.N. agency's Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases' 30-year record of developing new drugs, delivery strategies and enhanced research capacity in countries where parasitic tropical diseases are endemic, WHO said.

Over the coming decade, TDR will focus on addressing key bottlenecks in getting healthcare treatments to poor and remote populations, and fostering research and policy leadership in countries where these diseases create significant health problems, the agency said.

"If we want better health to work as a poverty reduction strategy, we must reach the poor. This is the acid test, and this is where we are failing," said WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan Tuesday. "I am very glad to see TDR move into this new territory."

The TDR Joint Coordinating Board approved Thursday the new 10-year strategy and vision. The Board includes the four TDR cosponsors of the U.N. Development Program, the U.N. Children's Fund, the World Bank and the WHO as well as 30 representatives of governments of developed and developing countries.

The plan calls on TDR, one of the major U.N.-based programs dedicated to health research in the developing world, to "foster an effective global research effort on infectious disease of poverty in which disease-endemic countries play a pivotal role." Over the past three decades TDR has sponsored research that paved the way for the control of leprosy, onchocerciasis, Chagas disease, lymphatic filariasis and visceral leishmaniasis.

The aim now is to eradicate these tropical diseases, "largely as a result of tools and strategies developed through TDR-coordinated activities," said Chan. The diseases previously killed or disabled millions of people every year,

Under the new strategy, TDR's field research experience and networks will be used to address one of the biggest challenges faced by the global health community, access to primary health treatments for poor people.

Research to investigate how best to use health tools and drugs more effectively in communities and health systems has traditionally been a key element in TDR's work, the U.N. agency said.

"TDR-supported research has made a difference because of a long-term commitment from countries and donors to research as a critical factor in disease control," said Dr Robert Ridley, director of TDR. "Together with experts around the world, particularly those from disease-endemic countries, we identify key disease control problems or gaps that research needs to address.

"We sponsor that research in partnerships, leading to evidence-based solutions that can be taken up by health ministries, global health agencies and disease-control officials," he said.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2005 called the onchocerciasis control effort "one of the most triumphant public health campaigns ever waged in the developing world."

Now, TDR is supporting African scientists as they explore how community-directed systems could be used to deliver other essential primary healthcare interventions that are still underutilized, such as insecticide-treated bed nets, home-based malaria treatment, TB diagnosis and treatment and Vitamin A supplements.

The new drug-resistant TB effort has the overwhelming moniker, "Global MDR-TB and XDR-TB Response Plan 2007-2008." It sets out measures needed now to prevent, treat and control extensively drug-resistant TB, known as XDR-TB, and multi-drug-resistant TB, tagged MDR-TB.

The plan also sets in motion actions to reach a 2015 goal of providing access to drugs and diagnostic tests to all MDR-TB and XDR-TB patients, expected to save the lives of up to 1.2 million people.

"XDR-TB is a threat to the security and stability of global health. This response plan identifies costs, milestones and priorities for health services that will continue to have an impact beyond its two-year time line," said Chan.

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