PHA-Exchange> The US President's speech and the Global Fund

[Aviva]

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From: "Dieter Neuvians MD" <neuvians at mweb.co.za>
.> 
> The US President's speech and the Global Fund
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> By Bernard Rivers, GFO Editor
> mailto:rivers at aidspan.org>
> 
> Reproduced from the Global Fund Observer Newsletter 
> (http://www.aidspan.org/gfo), a service of Aidspan.
> 
> President Bush uttered some remarkable words about AIDS in his State 
> of the Union address on Tuesday evening - more decisive and action-
> oriented words than we've heard from any US President while in of-
> fice. Bush acknowledged the severity of the crisis; he said the US 
> should play the leading role in tackling it; and he accepted the need 
> for widespread treatment programmes. Particularly interesting is that 
> he pointed out that the cost of anti-retroviral drugs has dropped to 
> $300 per year. That's true; but it only happened thanks to feisty 
> non-US manufacturers of generic drugs, whose interests the Bush ad-
> ministration has so often fought against.
> 
> Bush's commitment to $10 billion in new money sounds impressive at 
> first. But it's money to be spent over five years, the first of which 
> is 2004, not 2003. And only $1 billion of it is currently earmarked 
> for the Global Fund - an average of $200 million annually, which is 
> no better than the US has contributed to the Fund thus far.
> 
> The Global Fund will need about $40 billion over the five years 2004-
> 2008. The US's "equitable contribution" to that, based on relative 
> GDP, is at least $10 billion, and more realistically about $14 bil-
> lion. In that context, the President's promise of $5 billion of "old 
> money" plus $10 billion of "new money", all to be spread over five 
> years, with only one tenth going to the Fund and the rest to bilat-
> eral programs, sounds unexciting.
> 
> The US should give a far higher percentage of its AIDS money to the 
> Global Fund. And it should do so right now, rather than waiting until 
> 2004. The US administration recently acknowledged that the Fund "is 
> up, is operating, and is effective." Tommy Thompson, head of the US 
> delegation to the Fund and candidate for the Chairmanship - and the 
> man who was booed throughout his speech at the Barcelona AIDS confer-
> ence by activists yelling "Where's the $10 billion?" - should make it 
> clear that the US will allocate at least half of its AIDS money to 
> the Fund, not one tenth. And then he should urge other donors to fol-
> low that example.
> 
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