PHM-Exch> Global Fund concerned about funding targets

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel at gmail.com>
crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn at anu.edu.au


http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LK36487.htm

* Global Fund to seek $30 bln replenishment in 2010
* Anticipates funding gap of $3 bln in 2010
* Concerns over ability to scale-up new funding
CAPE TOWN, July 20 (Reuters) - The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis
and
Malaria wants up to $30 billion next year to replenish its coffers, but is
worried a new funding drive will lag behind growing demand, the fund's
executive
director said on Monday.
Since its launch by the G8 club of major industrial nations in 2002, the
fund
has distributed grants worth $16 billion in 140 countries around the world,
mainly to sub-Saharan Africa where the Aids pandemic has hit hardest.
However, a global economic downturn and recession in the United States and
other
G8 countries, coupled with demand that has "quadrupled", has raised concerns
whether rich countries would meet elevated funding targets.
"My concern is about our ability to scale up because the epidemic spreads
faster
than our ability to scale up with the funding," Michel Kazatchkine told
Reuters
on the sidelines of an international Aids conference in Cape Town.
"I have no signal that donors would take back or would not honour to what
they
have committed (to 2010). The fact is that the demand is much higher," he
said.
Kazatchkine said funding should be available if the G8 countries, which have
pumped trillions of dollars to prop up global financial markets and avoid
deep
recession, honour commitments to double aid to Africa to $25 billion a year
by 2010.
"We are asking for numbers ... that are peanuts if you look at the wealth
that
is generated every day in the world and ... if you look at what the world
was
able to mobilise to bail out the banks," he said.
Kazatchkine anticipated a funding gap of about $3 billion for the fund's
programmes in 2010, mainly for Aids but including TB and malaria. The three
diseases are responsible for millions of deaths each year in the world's
poorest
continent.
The fund raises donor money every three years, and in 2007 secured $10
billion
at the last cycle in Berlin for the 2008-2010 period. The next replenishment
takes place in September 2010 and will cover the years 2011 to 2013, said
Kazatchkine.
"I would certainly hope that we are looking to doubling or tripling the
amount
that was agreed in Berlin in our next replenishment conference," he said.
According to the fund, the programmes it financed have put 2.3 million
people on
treatment for HIV/Aids, while another 5.4 million people were treated for TB
and
88 million treated nets were distributed to prevent the spread of malaria.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20090721/74395048/attachment-0001.html>