[Gates Foundation] $500M to fight AIDS, TB, malaria

from The Toronto Star

CANADIAN PRESS

The battle against three diseases that are a scourge of sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions — HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria — was given an enormous boost Wednesday with a half-billion dollar gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The wealthy couple, leaders in the field of global public health, donated $500 million US over five years to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

"The Global Fund is one of the most important health initiatives in the world today," Bill Gates said in a statement announcing the gift.

"The Fund has an excellent track record, and we need to do everything we can to support its continued success, which will save millions of lives."

Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund, said the length of the grant was almost as important as the level of funding.

Providing antiretroviral drugs to people infected with HIV/AIDS is a major feature of the fund's work. Putting people on these life-saving drugs is a long-term commitment, and requires corresponding long-term commitments from the governments, charitable foundations and businesses that provide the financing the fund disperses, Feachem suggested.

"The Global Fund is today supporting hundreds of thousands of people on antiretroviral therapy and in the future will be supporting millions of people on antiretroviral therapy," he said during a teleconference announcing the grant.

"And this represents an unprecedented moral commitment to sustain this treatment until death, which may be decades. We certainly hope that it is decades for most of those patients."

"So the Global Fund not only needs adequate income, but it needs sustainable and predictable income. And the five-year commitment from the Gates Foundation sends a strong message about the importance of sustainability and predictability of funds and sets an example for all other donors and contributors to the Global Fund."

Announcement of the contribution came as AIDS activists and scientists from around the world prepare to take part in the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto next week.

The contribution announced Wednesday is in addition to a previous gift of $150 million US the Microsoft founder's foundation has given to the Global Fund since it was established four years ago. Last month, the Gates Foundation announced it was plowing $287 million US into research aimed at development of an AIDS vaccine.