AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria fund requires $ 14 billion

LONDON (Reuters) – At least $ 14 billion is needed to strengthen efforts to fight HIV / AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and to eradicate persistent pandemics that claim millions of lives, said Peter Sands, director of the fund. AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Sands said the money could save 16 million lives and halve the balance of the three diseases.

These funds will be used to strengthen health systems in poor countries that are not equipped to cope with current epidemics and are not able to cope with new potential epidemics.

"The new threats mean that there is no central region," Sands said in a statement.

"We must protect the gains we have made and benefit from them, otherwise these gains will disappear, new cases of injury and death will disappear and the prospects of eradicating epidemics will disappear".

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a group of governments, civil society partners and the private sector that invests around $ 4 billion a year to fight these infectious diseases. Created in 2002, this fund has reduced the number of deaths due to AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by around a third, but the eradication of these pandemics is still far away.

In 2016, TB killed 1.6 million people, including 300,000 infected with HIV, making it one of the top ten leading causes of death in the world.

Malaria kills nearly half a million people each year, mostly infants or young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the case of AIDS, about 37 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and about 15 million of them do not have the necessary antivirals.

Sandes acknowledged during a telephone conversation how difficult it is to encourage international donors to commit funds to achieve such an objective. But he added that with the fund's ability to attract the participation and investments of the governments of the countries affected by the epidemic, he was confident that this would have a major impact. "If we intensify the struggle now, we will save the lives of millions of others."

(Reuters)