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JOHANNESBURG — Cuts in donor funding could cause an HIV "nightmare," the
United Nations' AIDS agency chief warned Monday.
Michel Sidibe appealed to government and private donors to keep
investing in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an
international financing institution. He said that cuts in donations will
decrease the availability of free or subsidized life-saving drugs to
African patients.
An estimated 94 percent of patients on anti-retroviral treatment in
Africa count on external donor funds to provide their medications,
Sidibe said.
"If we stop now, if we reduce the financing, the people who are on
treatment today ... we will transform their hope for universal access
into a universal nightmare, because they will start dying," Sidibe told
Theociated Press Monday.
In South Africa, 920,000 people are currently receiving anti-retroviral
treatment, just over half of the 1.7 million who need the drugs. New
policies which will expand the reach of the program announced by South
African President Jacob Zuma in December 2009 will also require
increased financial resources.
South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the country's HIV
treatment program is heavily dependent on external donor funding. An
estimated 5.7 million South Africans are infected with HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS, more than any other country.
The Global Fund's "Results Report", released Monday, described the
substantial advances that have been made in AIDS, tuberculosis and
malaria prevention and treatment since the fund's establishment eight
years ago, including the possible elimination of mother-to-child HIV
transmission by 2015.
"It is also now possible to imagine a world with no more malaria
deaths," said Michel D. Kazatchkine, the Global Fund's executive
director. In addition, tuberculosis prevalence in many countries is
declining, and the Global Fund believes this could be halved by 2015.
However, it cautions that the achievement of these goals is only
possible if health programs receive increased investments as planned.
The Global Fund will meet in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 24 to
examine how it can meet its goals eliminating or reducing instances of
the three diseases by 2015. The group will present donor countries with
three public health scenarios, based on amounts of funding ranging from
$13-20 billion, for the period 2011-2013.
In October this year, the Global Fund will ask donors for financial
contributions during its conference in New York. This will be the third
time since the fund was established in 2002 that donors are being asked
to replenish their finances. There is concern that the global economic
downturn could negatively impact the funding commitments made by donor
countries.
"The world's investments are clearly making a difference," Sidibe said,
"but without a fully funded Global Fund, we would be putting the lives
of millions of people currently on treatment in jeopardy." |
