Imperial public health expert to head up WHO Tuberculosis Task Force, 30 November 2005

Dr Rifat Atun, Director of Centre for Health Management at Imperial College’s Tanaka Business School will chair a new World Health Organization Task Force on Health System Strengthening and Tuberculosis Control.

Dr Atun is a leading expert in public health systems, and conducts research on behalf of international agencies on how health systems can contribute to efforts to control or eradicate public health diseases.The new initiative is led by the WHO’s Stop TB Department.

Dr Atun said: "Around one third of the world's population is infected with tuberculosis. Of these, around eight million people develop the active disease and each year two million people die from tuberculosis.

"The new WHO Task Force has been created as a direct response to the fact that tuberculosis is a treatable disease and those two million deaths need never have happened.

"Global leaders, through last year's G8 communique, and via the United Nations General Assembly and World Health Assembly, have pledged to respond to global disease pandemics and provide support to health systems to achieve immediate improvements."

 Dr Atun, who leads the Business School's international public health teaching programme, said a WHO priority was to strengthen the health systems, predominantly in underprivileged nations especially affected by tuberculosis.

"There are many new initiatives in health system strengthening and the new Task Force will identify how the linkages between global disease management programmes and health system strengthening initiatives can be strengthened to reduce the number of deaths from this debilitating and prevalent disease."

Notes to editors:

1. In 2005 Tanaka Business School ran the Public Health Leadership Programme, supported by a generous grant by the SOROS Foundation, and co-developed by the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (ECOHOST), at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

About Imperial's Tanaka Business School www.imperial.ac.uk/tanaka

Consistently rated in the top three UK university institutions, Imperial College London is a world leading science-based university whose reputation for excellence in teaching and research attracts students (11,000) and staff (6,000) of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and management and delivers practical solutions that enhance the quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture. Website: www.imperial.ac.uk

Imperial College's Tanaka Business School is a world-class provider of business education and research, focusing primarily on Imperial strengths in innovation and entrepreneurship, finance, and healthcare management. It offers full-time and executive MBAs, Masters' programmes in Finance, Risk Management, International Health Management and Management; and a PhD programme. The Financial Times currently ranks Tanaka Business School as 4th in Europe for research excellence, 10th in the world for its Executive MBA and 1st in Europe and 5th in the world for entrepreneurship

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