• Saturday, October 30, 2010
• Inter Press Service

The 11.7 billion dollars pledged Tuesday to replenish the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the coming three years falls significantly short of the 20 billion dollars hoped for, threatening to undo the progress made in the fight against these diseases - the three largest infectious killers in the world.

The 8.3 billion dollar funding shortfall 'will result in the death of millions of people from otherwise treatable diseases. Ambitious country programmes, which could mean the difference between life and death, may no longer be feasible,' said Dr. Jennifer Cohn, HIV/AIDS policy advisor for Doctors Without Borders.

The publicly and privately financed Global Fund dispenses money to countries to support programmes that treat and prevent the three infectious diseases. These programmes are estimated to have saved some 5.7 million lives - results that Global Fund Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine said were not expected even three years ago. But as a consequence of Wednesday's underfunding, Kazatchkine worries that these gains could be reversed.

'The total amount pledged today, if it were to be the last word from donors, is not enough to meet even the lowest estimate of demand that we have for the next three years, and not enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals,' he said. Three funding scenarios ranging from 13 to 20 billion dollars were proposed for 2011-2013 to scale up the Fund's programmes, with each amount corresponding to different paces and time tables for achieving the health goals.

With even the minimum target amount not reached, Kazatchkine said that countries would not be able to scale up their programmes as fast as had been hoped. As a result, lives will continue to be lost. Even now, 'people are dying from preventable and treatable diseases,' he said. 'This is the reality of the worldâ?¦ people who do not access care die of diseases, and this is a scandal.'

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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