In just four-and-a-half years, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has helped 544 000 HIV-positive people begin anti-retroviral treatment, distributed 11,3-million insecticide-treated bed nets and treated 1,4-million cases of tuberculosis (TB).
This is according to a progress report released on Thursday by the fund, which is holding its second Partnership Forum in Durban from July 1 to 3 this year, followed by a mid-term replenishment meeting on July 4 and 5.
Together with representatives from civil society, governments and the private and corporate sectors, fund board members will discuss the effectiveness of the fund’s policies and practices and how they can be improved.
The fund is a Geneva-based organisation, created in 2002 to increase resources to fight three of the world’s most devastating diseases, and to direct those resources to areas of greatest need.
In 2005, the fund was responsible for 20% of all international funding to combat HIV/Aids, and for two-thirds of global funding for programmes against TB and malaria. The fund has approved 386 programmes in 131 countries with a total commitment of $5,4-billion to fight the three diseases. Only $3,4-billion has been pledged to date.
The Durban conference is not expected to bring in new money. ”The aim is to inspire donors and to lay a foundation of trust,” Jon Lidén, head of communications of the fund, said at a press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday. ”But we have the hope and belief that some new pledges will be seen anyway.”
The fund works with both public and private sectors. ”The fund involves all sectors of society, not just government,” Lidén said. ”We give out money solely on merit. The global fund has never given in to any kind of political pressure on how to spend money.”
One representative of the private sector involved with the fund is Dr Brian Brink, senior vice-president of mining conglomerate Anglo American. Brink doubles as an alternate board member of the fund.
”This is a new structure where public and private sectors work together in upscaling the response to the burden of the disease,” Brink said on Thursday. ”The usual way of work is bureaucratic and slow in this health industry; the global fund is all about results and fast results too.”
The money raised so far comes almost exclusively from donor governments in well-developed countries such as the United States, Canada, Japan, and European Union member states. According to Brink, more private businesses and members of civil society should get involved.
”The global fund is very much aware of the challenge to raise additional funds. When you ask a person in the street about the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, he or she will probably not know what it is. Now we build up a track record, which will make it easier to raise money in the future.”
The Partnership Forum in Durban will kick off with a memorial service, led by Yvonne Chaka Chaka, to honour Phumzile Ntuli, her former band member. Ntuli contracted malaria when she travelled to Gabon with the band. Four days after her return to South Africa, she fell into a coma and died soon afterwards.
Chaka Chaka Productions said in a statement that the memorial service will ”acknowledge the devastating impact of malaria on individuals’ lives” and that there is an ”urgent need for increased and concerted action”.
”This commemoration, on the eve of the second Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria Partnership Forum, will remind us of the unacceptable loss of life caused by this preventable, treatable and controllable disease,” it said.
The fund’s progress report says early indications of the effect of its work on the three diseases are that additional funding bears a promise of reducing the prevalence of the diseases substantially.
The potential for most rapid progress is in the field of malaria, where concentrated investments have drastically reduced mortality and carry promise for a global turnaround in the prevalence and mortality rates, the report says.