Global Fund : ‘Spectacular’ success combatting AIDS, TB, Malaria

(Vatican Radio) The Global Fund to Fight AIDs, Tuberculosis and Malaria is seeking pledges from states to finance prevention and treatment programs which combat the three deadly diseases. France just committed 1.4 billion U.S. dollars to the Fund, which will hold its triennial “replenishment” conference at the end of the year. Officials of the Global Fund are meeting with Italian government leaders today in Rome to encourage Italy to renew its pledges.

The Global Fund celebrated its 10^th anniversary in 2012. Dr. Christoph Benn, Director of External Relations for the Global Fund, says over the past eleven years, the organization has helped to significantly lower the number of people worldwide who are infected by these three lethal illnesses.

“The fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is showing amazing results,” he says. “If we go back a couple of years ago when AIDS was overwhelming many countries in Africa and in other continents when people who had no access to treatment and millions of people were dying, it was a very desperate situation. And with the support of the international community and through the Global Fund, it has been possible to turn that around in a way that many experts would not have expected just a couple of years ago. Now we have in Africa more than fifty percent of people suffering from AIDS now have access to the highly effective AIDS treatment and mortality rates have gone down in virtually all African countries.”

“We have spectacular declines in mortality from Malaria because we have been able to provide families with bed nets to protect them from mosquito bites; we have provided them with effective treatment and diagnostics and the same with Tuberculosis: the detection rates have gone up and success rates in treatment have gone up. So this is quite a spectacular success in international development. And the Global Fund, as the major international funder for the fight against these three diseases, has played a big part in that.”

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has launched a new framework to accelerate action to reach 15 million people with antiretroviral treatment by 2015.

The framework, entitled Treatment 2015, outlines practical and innovative ways to increase the number of people who have access to antiretroviral medicines. The Global Fund is “very much cooperating” with the UNAIDS effort says Dr. Benn.

“We are collaborating very closely with UNAIDS, also with colleagues from WHO (World Health Organization).”

“They are the technical experts on these diseases and they are advising the countries, you know, how to design the programs that we then finance. So that’s the division of labor if you like: they provide the technical support and we provide the financing and together we can make sure that millions of people have access to care, prevention and treatment.”

Dr. Benn says though the Fund has helped bring preventative care and treatment to people in many countries, “we need to see greater progress in countries with the weakest infrastructures.” The Fund also collaborates with and supports Catholic health care facilities and Caritas.

Listen to Tracey McClure’s extended interview with Dr. Christoph Benn: