The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria today marked World Tuberculosis Day with a call for greater access to treatment in the developing world, where the disease takes its heaviest toll.

"In the next two years, the fund will provide resources to TB programs in 16 of the 22 high-burden countries that together account for 80 percent of all cases," said Tommy Thompson, the U.S. health and human services secretary and the chairman of the Global Fund's board.

"Over 15 percent of the resources devoted to the fund's first two rounds of grants will go toward fighting TB," Thompson added.

Thompson said all of the fund's tuberculosis projects will involve a focus on the directly observed therapy, short-course, or DOTS, treatment, which he called the "most effective means of administering treatment, curing patients, reducing transmission and preventing the development of drug resistance" (Global Fund release, March 24).