Budget shortfalls in Global Fund costs lives

Home / Health / Budget shortfalls in Global Fund costs lives

And while the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was conceptualised as a means to tip these scales, less than 500 000 people are expected to access these drugs via global fund grants by 2008.

HealthGAP (Global Access Project) spokesperson Sharonann Lynch told delegates at the recent International Preparedness Summit in Cape Town that 270 000 of these people would be from Sub-Saharan Africa with the rest made up from other developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Lynch claimed that 2003 was the make or break year for the global fund which she described as ‘still the best instrument the world has in the fight against the AIDS’.

However, she pointed out that the global fund was facing a budget shortfall of U$1,4 billion (R11,2 billion) for 2003 or round three.

Launched two years ago, expectations were high that the global fund would deliver a rapid scale-up of comprehensive prevention, care and treatment programmes and close the deadly gap in access to treatment.

United Nations Secretary General, Koffi Annan, expressed the hope at the time that the fund would be able to mobilise U$10 billion (R80 billion) annually. Up to now the global fund has approved grants to 164 programmes in 85 countries, mostly in Africa.

South Africa has received U$31,4 million (R251,2 million), overwhelmingly for prevention programmes and has pledged U$2 million (R16 million) to the fund.

Lynch pointed out that there had been a lack of credible large-scale treatment proposals for anti-retroviral therapy.

She calculated that the global fund grants would ensure that only 100 people in Zimbabwe would receive anti-retrovirals in the first year and 500 in the second.

In the Ukraine 100 people were likely to gain in the first year and only 300 in the second.

In Nepal nobody was likely to receive the drugs in the first year with 250 having access in the second.

The deadline for the submission of round three proposals is May with the board set to announce the results in October.

HealthGAP is a United States based AIDS and human rights group who campaign against policies that deny treatment and fuel the spread of HIV.

BACKGROUND TO THE GLOBAL FUND

The global fund was launch by United Nations General Secretary Koffi Annan in Abuja , Nigeria on April 26, 2001 as a new mechanism to attract, manage and disburse additional resources through a public-private partnership.

‘There has been a worldwide revolt of public opinion. People no longer accept that the sick and dying, simply because they are poor, should be denied drugs which have transformed the lives of others who are better off,’ Annan said at the time.

A board composed of an equal number of donor and recipient countries governs the global fund.

It also includes affected communities in decision-making processes.

The global fund bases disbursements on a demand-driven model where country-level grant applications are created and submitted by Country Co-Ordinating Mechanisms (CCM).

CCMs should include broad representation from governments, NGOs, people living with diseases, civil society, multi-lateral, bilateral agencies and the private sector.