Diarmaid McDonald
After ten years of success now is not the time to stop investing its future – we have 200 days to save the lives of millions counting on the Fund.
The numbers commonly heard in global health often overwhelm and bamboozle. Pills and patients, dollars and deadlines, doctors and nurses, live and deaths are all counted in the thousands, millions and billions. But this week a more comprehendible milestone was reached when the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria celebrated its tenth birthday.
In ten short years this overachieving youngster has transformed the health of whole countries and communities. It has moved with unparalleled energy and impact to bring essential AIDS, TB and Malaria services to people in desperate need right across the African, Asian and South American continents. And the reward for the effort expended by all involved in the Fund could hardly be greater – an extra 7.7 million people alive to celebrate this moment. Here’s the Fund’s take on the first ten years:
The impact on the global AIDS pandemic has been incredible. When the Fund opened its doors there were only a few hundred thousand accessing the essential ARV treatment needed to prevent people with HIV dying from AIDS. Over the last decade the Global Fund, along with the USA’s PEPFAR programme, has helped get more than 7 million onto treatment. These numbers are mind boggling, but the simple and stunning effect of giving life to a mother, father or child is easy to comprehend.
In the last year we have seen glorious new horizons come into view. The evidence that HIV treatment also virtually eliminates the risk of a person living with HIV transmitting the virus to their partner gives us a prevention weapon more powerful than most could have hoped for. Combined with new, smart thinking on how we best use our resources to support the right kind of interventions, we can now seriously aim for an end to AIDS. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have already set the US on that course.
But just as we’ve witnessed the most exciting breakthrough since the development of the first HIV medication, donors have slammed on the breaks. Following a replenishment in New York in 2010 which aimed for $20bn, needed a minimum of $13bn, but secured only $11.7bn, the Fund has been undermined by delayed payments from donors following media reports which misrepresented the scale of low level corruption the Fund itself had uncovered with its own systems.
Corruption – which takes funds away from lifesaving programmes – can never be tolerated and the reforms the Fund is undertaking to punish those involved and further strengthen its systems are vital. But the weak pledges made by donors and delayed payments have led to the cancellation of the Fund’s latest funding round for the first time in its history, freezing new programmes until 2014.
Campaign members, the International AIDS Alliance, have compiled a report which details how millions of lives are at risk as a result of this decision in just five of the countries looking to the Fund for support. No excuses are acceptable. This cannot be allowed to stand. The Stop AIDS Campaign has joined a global call for an emergency replenishment within the first 200 days of 2012 to allow countries to restart efforts to reach all of their people with lifesaving HIV prevention, treatment and care as soon as possible.
The UK government must lead the international effort to make this replenishment happen and make it a success. They must now deliver on their long held commitment to give more to the Fund by doubling their contribution and helping to ensure we can keep growing the response over the next ten years until our efforts match the scale of the challenge we face.
