After decades of advancement in the fight against the diseases were halted by the COVID-19 epidemic, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has won $14.25 billion in essential fresh funding.
The greatest amount ever pledged for a multilateral health organization, according to US President Joe Biden, who hosted the conference in New York City alongside the annual high-level UNGA gathering. The financing is essential to battling the diseases.According to Biden, "this investment will save another 20 million lives and cut mortality from these diseases by another 64% over the following four years."
The fund, a 2002 public-private partnership, is looking for $18 billion from governments, civic society, and the corporate sector for its upcoming three-year funding cycle. It had already raised a more than a third of the total before the conference on Wednesday.
According to Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund, "what's happened today is actually an unparalleled mobilization of money for global health."
Keep it up, Biden pleaded, saying "thank you all for stepping up, especially in a difficult global economic situation."The $14.25 billion sum, according to the Global Fund, is probably going to rise as additional donations come in. Italy and the United Kingdom have stated they will make their promises at a later time.
Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi, pledged $1 million earlier in the day and said, "For the government and people of Malawi, this is not a conference, but a life saver."USAID states that tuberculosis is a "serious public health problem in Malawi," while UNAIDS estimates that 990,000 adults and children in Malawi had HIV in 2021.
The US has made the largest offer of the contributors, at $6 billion.Significant commitments were also made by the European Union, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, the Gates Foundation, and Japan.
"Tuberculosis can be cured. We are able to stop malaria. These dreadful diseases are treatable. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, declared after announcing the bloc's most recent donation that "we will end AIDS, we will end tuberculosis, and we will end malaria – once and for all.""Some are adding up the pennies."
At its most recent donor conference in 2019, which was hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, the fund raised a then-record $14 billion.The government's choice to postpone its announcement received some criticism in the UK.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, claimed it would "harm the UK's national interest" and "delay the fight against AIDS, TB, and malaria."
The UK and Italy's donations alone, according to Camille Spire, president of the French nonprofit AIDES, would probably not bring the total up to the desired amount.
She said that she was "mad" and that the result would entail fewer screening programs than had been anticipated, fewer treatments, less money for community health centers, and less strengthening of health systems. "While some are counting their pennies, some are counting the dead," she said.Over the past 20 years, the fund says it has been able to save more than 50 million lives by reducing the death toll from AIDS, TB, and malaria by 50%.
30 percent of all international funding for HIV programs, 76 percent for TB, and 63 percent for malaria are provided by the Global Fund.
According to US legislation, the country may not provide more than one-third of the Global Fund's money; this restriction is meant to serve as a challenge to other countries to match the US contribution.
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