Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged Thursday 500 million US dollars in donation to a fund against serious diseases like AIDS.

Addressing a symposium here on the Global Fund to Fight HIV/ AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the premier said infectious disease is one of the most immediate urgent tasks confronting the human being.

"We cannot tolerate a situation in which one person dies every five seconds somewhere in the world from these three killer diseases," he said.

Koizumi said the issue of fighting infectious diseases is a major concern for participants in next week's summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) in Britain.

The fund was sponsored by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori at the G-8 summit in Okinawa and set up two years later. Japan has already contributed 327 million dollars to the fund.

Source: Xinhua