Box 6
Global Health Initiatives

Four major global health initiatives were launched between 1998 and 2000:

Roll Back Malaria, a global strategy to reduce deaths from malaria by increasing access to prompt and effective treatment (including protective intermittent therapy for pregnant women) and prevention tools (including insecticide-treated bednets); by facilitating rapid response to malaria outbreaks; and by developing new products for the prevention and treatment of malaria.

Stop TB, a global strategy to stop the spread of TB around the world. One of its objectives is to promote implementation of the directly observed therapy short-course strategy (DOTS). The effective implementation of DOT in NYC, in response to the epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has served as a model in this country and around the world.

International Partnership Against AIDS in Africa, a UNAIDS-led effort to mitigate the effects of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 1999, as part of this effort, the U.S. government launched the Leadership and Investment for Fighting an Epidemic (LIFE) Initiative, which provides support to the hardest-hit countries for reducing HIV transmission, improving treatment of HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections, and strengthening national capacities to collect disease surveillance data and manage national HIV/AIDS programs. The Global AIDS Program is the CDC component of the LIFE Initiative (see Box 21).

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
(GAVI)
, a global effort to strengthen childhood
immunization programs and bring a new generation
of recently licensed vaccines into use in developing
countries. These include vaccines against hepatitis B,
childhood meningitis, yellow fever, and respiratory
infections, which are the leading cause of death in
children under age five. Substantial resources for this
purpose have been pledged by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and the governments of Norway,
Netherlands and the United States.

Targets for Disease Reduction
These targets for disease reduction were endorsed at the
Group of Eight Industrialized Nations Summit in Okinawa in July 2000:

HIV/AIDS: 25% reduction in prevalence in young
people by 2010
TB: 50% reduction in deaths by 2010
Malaria: 50% reduction in deaths by 2010
Return to CDC's Global Infectious Disease Strategy
National Center for Infectious Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, GA