New York:
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria raised $14.25 billion on Wednesday at a donor conference led by US President Joe Biden as decades of progress against the diseases are held back by Covid.
It was the highest amount ever pledged to a multilateral health organization, but the ambitious target of $18 billion was missed after the UK and Italy said their pledges would come later.
Founded in 2002, the Global Fund brings together governments, multilateral agencies, civil society and the private sector.
“What happened today is, in effect, an unparalleled mobilization of resources for global health,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund, adding that he expected the two countries to make their commitments in due course.
“Thank you all for ramping up, especially in a challenging global economic environment, and I ask you to keep going,” Biden urged. “Let’s end this fight together.”
Of the countries, the United States pledged the highest amount, $6 billion, followed by France with 1.6 billion euros, 1.3 billion euros by Germany, $1.08 billion by Japan, Can $1.21 billion by Canada and 715 million euros by the European Union.
The Gates Foundation has pledged $912 million.
The $18 billion goal was based on getting back on track to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2030, reclaiming ground lost during the Covid pandemic, and saving 20 million lives in the coming years. three years.
It was 30 percent more than the amount raised during the organization’s sixth and most recent replenishment, hosted by President Emmanuel Macron of France in 2019, bringing in a then-record $14 billion.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, highlighted how life expectancy in Japan was 84 years, while that in Lesotho was only 50.
“Much of that difference is due to the fact that HIV, TB and malaria still kill millions in the poorest communities of the poorest countries,” he said.
“Thanks in large part to the Global Fund, these diseases now kill half as many people as they did 20 years ago. That’s a lot of progress. But that profit is at stake.”
The fund estimates it has reduced the death toll from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 50 percent, saving more than 50 million lives.
– Signs of recovery –
Last year, the Global Fund warned that the pandemic was having a devastating impact on its work, leading to declining results across the board for the first time in the fund’s history.
Last week, however, it said the massive resources it pumped in to counter the downturn had paid off and that “recovery is underway” against all three diseases.
The number of people who died of tuberculosis rose in 2020 for the first time in a decade, when it caused an estimated 1.5 million deaths, making it the world’s second-largest killer of infectious diseases after Covid.
But the Global Fund, which provides 76 percent of all international funding to fight TB, said programs showed signs of recovery last year.
Similarly, the number of people receiving HIV prevention services rose again after declining in 2020, to 12.5 million people worldwide, the organization said. The fund provides almost a third of all international funding for the fight against HIV.
Health service interruptions during the pandemic have also taken a heavy toll on the fight against malaria, pushing the number of deaths by 12 percent to an estimated 627,000 by 2020.
But the Global Fund said a rapid scaling up of programs had allowed them to come back, with some 280 million suspected cases tested and 148 million treated last year.
Under a Congressional decision, the United States cannot provide more than one-third of the funding for the Global Fund — a limit that serves as an appropriate challenge for other countries to double the U.S. pledge.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)