Global Fund

UNAIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation have been tracking donor government assistance for AIDS in low- and middle- income countries since 2002. This latest report provides data from governments for 2011, the most recent year with comparable data available across donors. As it shows, international assistance rose sharply from 2002 through 2008, the period just before the onset of the economic crisis. It then began to flatten and, last year, for the first time, disbursements declined. The current report finds that although funding has gone back up, it remains at 2008 levels. If such trends continue, reaching the UN Political Declaration investment target of $22-24 billion needed by 2015 could be at risk.

This report draws on recently collected field data from numerous countries where the International HIV/AIDS Alliance operates to explain why the funding crisis requires urgent action on the part of Global Fund donors and all other stakeholders. The Alliance’s recommendations for responding to the crisis are based on our analysis of the implications of funding shortfalls in the following specific areas: HIV treatment; HIV prevention; care and support; services for key populations at higher risk of HIV infection; and efforts to create an enabling environment.

This is the 2nd Edition of the Treatment Action Group and Stop TB Partnership’s 2011 report on funding trends for tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D) from the baseline year 2005 through 2010, the last year for which full data is available. Updates to this report include new funding figures from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, and Company Y; as well as revised data from Pfizer and the European Commission. In total, these donors reported an additional $13.4 million in TB R&D funding for 2010.

Contents of Newsletter

Welcome to the 95th issue of HIV This Week ! In this issue, we cover the following topics:

1. Young people
• Sexual risk for HIV in South Africa and the USA: it is not at all what you think

Over the course of 2011, the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria experienced unprecedented adversity. Media accounts and internal reports drew attention to instances of corruption involving grantees: $34 million of probable fraud in four African countries triggered a suspension of assistance by Germany and two other European donors. External reviews detailed the Fund’s deficient managerial practices, weak oversight of investments, and ineffectual board governance. An alarming, $2-billion-plus financial shortfall, revealed suddenly at year’s end, reflected a worsening global economy, overly optimistic forecasting by the Fund secretariat, and flagging donor trust and confidence in the Fund itself.

How has funding to developing countries for health improvement changed in the wake of the global financial crisis? The question is vital for policy making, planning, and advocacy purposes in donor and recipient countries alike. We measured the total amount of financial and in-kind assistance that flowed from both public and private channels to improve health in developing countries during the period 1990–2011. The data for the years 1990–2009 reflect disbursements, while the numbers for 2010 and 2011 are preliminary estimates. Development assistance for health continued to grow in 2011, but the rate of growth was low.We estimate that assistance for health grew by 4 percent each year from 2009 to 2011, reaching a total of $27.73 billion.

In March 2010 the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership launched the RBM Progress & Impact Series, a strategic effort to secure high levels of commitment to malaria control among donor countries, international health organizations and governments of endemic and epidemic countries. By benchmarking progress this effort has sought to ensure a level of support that would result in sustained, longterm commitment and success toward ultimately ridding the world of malaria.

The last decade saw a dramatic rise in resources devoted to addressing the HIV epidemic in low- and middle- income countries, contributing to significant scale up of treatment and prevention efforts. In marking the 30th year of the epidemic, UNAIDS recently reported that treatment access had increased more than 20 times and new infections fell by nearly 25% over the decade.1