World Fund Steps Up Fight Against AIDS
Thu 16 October, 2003 18:29 BST
GENEVA (Reuters) - An international fund playing a lead role in the war on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria approved a further $623 million Thursday for 50 countries battling the killer scourges.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, launched nearly two years ago with the backing of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said around 60 percent of the money would go to fighting AIDS, mainly in Africa.
The new funds will provide a further 200,000 AIDS sufferers with life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs over the next two years, the Global Fund said.
"This is good, but it is certainly not enough," said Richard Feachem, executive director of the Geneva-based fund.
In sub-Saharan African, which has the highest number of AIDS patients, only around 50,000 people receive treatment, while for developing countries as a whole the figure is a mere six percent of six million sufferers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a target of three million people on drugs treatments by the end of 2005, but hitting that goal will cost around $3 billion a year from all sources, including the fund, Feachem said.
The latest disbursements took to $2.1 billion the amount the fund has given to finance campaigns against the three diseases, which together kill around six million people every year.
"In less than two years, the global fund has become a leading force in the fight against these three deadly diseases," said Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson, who chaired a meeting of the fund's board.
Speaking in a teleconference from Chiang Mai, Thailand, where the board meeting was held, Feachem said the fund would be calling for countries suffering from the diseases to submit a fresh round of proposals for financing early next year.
He said he expected the volume of requests to increase, partly because of the WHO's so-called "three-by-five" treatment campaign.
But although the fund already had pledges of around one billion dollars from donors for 2004, some of that was already earmarked for existing projects, he added.
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