World Cup fever boosts fight against neglected diseases

A new mechanism to fund drugs for developing countries has been inaugurated at the current World Cup football tournament. The international drug purchase facility, financed by a tax levied on airline tickets and administered by a new initiative called UnitAid, will be used to pay for drugs against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Initiated by Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and President Jacques Chirac of France and adopted at February's Paris conference on innovative financing for development, UnitAid comes under the remit of the World Health Organization, Unicef, and UNAIDS and has initial support from some 40 countries. Patrons include the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, and the international football federation (FIFA).

“We are aware of the power of our flagship event,” said FIFA's president, Joseph Blatter. With billions of people watching it around the world, the World Cup is, he said, “a great platform for joining in this alliance with UnitAid to help in the fight against three major life threatening diseases.”

Each match of the tournament is being started with a ceremonial exchange between the teams' captains of memorial footballs bearing UnitAid branding.

UnitAid describes the new purchase facility as “a simple, equitable, and economically neutral tool [that] international organisations can rely on.” It will be financed by a tax on airline tickets.

France is the first country to institute the levy, which it will introduce on 1 July. Standard class passengers on short haul flights will pay an extra €1 (£0.7; $1.30), and business and first class passengers will pay €4. The respective levies on long haul tickets will be €10 and €40.

Britain and other countries are expected to follow shortly. Last week President Chirac pressed Tony Blair for a firm commitment to introduce the levy.

A spokesman for Britain's Department for International Development said: “The UK fully supports the UnitAid campaign and the proposal by France and other governments for an international drug purchase facility…and [we] will announce more details in due course.”

UnitAid is the latest in a series of innovative funding measures established to help in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria as part of the UN's millennium development goals.

Medical campaigners, drug companies, and politicians all extol funding of drug research and development through international non-profit foundations. Yet in the run up to next month's summit in St Petersburg of the “G8” most industrialised countries there has been growing unease that recent advances in the form of new fundraising techniques and grants from philanthropists such as Bill Gates could be undermined by a failure to commit sufficient public finance.

More details are at www.unitaid.eu.