And DNA testing, which can determine which strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are present in sputum has 98 per cent accuracy and can be used to detect drug-resistant strains in as little as a day. DNA-based diagnosis is also cost-effective. As well as diagnosis, new management methods such as mobile phone text messaging and medicine kits with built-in reminder alarms will be used to enhance patients' drug compliance. Drug combinations — where different drugs are combined in the same pill — will also be used to reduce the number of pills a patient has to take from around 13 to three or four a day. After two-and-a-half years effective interventions will be scaled up. Some 20 cities covering 100 million people should be included by the end of the fifth year of the program, funded by a US$33 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Although China achieved the 2005 global targets for tuberculosis control, these are only targets for implementation and monitoring in the national and international efforts to control tuberculosis. More important are the targets of halving the prevalence of, and mortality from, tuberculosis. Countries in the Western Pacific region committed to these targets in 1999, as did the wider international community as part of the MDGs. To achieve these targets, China needs to address existing challenges to its efforts to control tuberculosis. Foremost is the serious epidemic of MDR tuberculosis. WHO estimates that a third of the world's cases of MDR tuberculosis are in China, even though the country has only 15% of the global burden of tuberculosis. The recent expansion of DOTS should help to limit the development of MDR tuberculosis. But reduction of the existing burden of multidrug resistance will take time, especially since poor-quality DOTS services in some areas and inappropriate treatment of tuberculosis in parts of the hospital system continue to generate new cases of MDR tuberculosis. The absence of a sound financing mechanism to fully fund tuberculosis services is a further problem. Although funding for tuberculosis services is at its highest level ever, the Ministry of Health estimates that the national tuberculosis control program still had a 23% funding gap in 2005. Additionally, more than a quarter of current funding comes from external grants and loans, making sustainable funding a major challenge. Another challenge is to make tuberculosis services accessible to the entire population. Although China has a policy of free tuberculosis services, in most places these are available only to permanent residents in a particular community. Urban migrants, who have relocated from poor rural areas to seek a better livelihood, are not eligible for such free services.