On Friday, international and Russian health officials agreed on a TB program that should pave the way for the release of a stalled World Bank loan for fighting the disease. Wieslaw Jakubowiak, the World Health Organization's TB program director in Moscow, said the approval should open the door to a $150 million World Bank loan, which has been in limbo since 1998, to fight TB and AIDS. Jakubowiak said the working group, which was created in 1999 to advise Health Minister Yury Shevchenko on TB, had ironed out contradictions between the WHO's TB program and local practices that had stalled the loan. Once Shevchenko approves the program, the next step will be to implement a five-year plan that includes World Bank funding. Christof Ruhl, the bank's chief economist for Russia, said $100 million of the loan is earmarked for TB and $50 million for HIV/AIDS.

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