Fact sheet
A global AIDS and health fund

A multi-billion-dollar investment in the battle against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria will save millions of people. Those already hit by these diseases would be able to live longer and healthier lives. Even the worst affected countries could be able to regain the ground lost in their fight against poverty and inequality.

 

• Following commitments made at the Okinawa summit of G8 countries in July 2000 and a subsequent health experts meeting in December 2000 in Okinawa, work began in earnest to improve prospects for confronting HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases in four countries. This led to work on new financial mechanisms for increasing the flow of resources to developing countries. Consensus gradually emerged that a single fund—with an initial focus on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria—would be the best starting point.

• Such a fund promises to help leverage additional political engagement and financial commitment, ease the procurement of commodities and draw new partners into struggles to bring the diseases under control.

• The efforts to create the fund received a huge boost when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the establishment of a global fund on AIDS and health at the Organization of African Unity summit in Abuja in April 2001.

• Weeks later, in early June 2001, representatives from more than 50 countries, multilateral and non-governmental organizations, private foundations and other stakeholders met for the first major consultation on the fund.

• The meeting achieved a high degree of consensus that the new fund would focus on ssHIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, would promote an integrated approach to the three diseases, and would be geared at strengthening and expanding existing development processes rather than designing new projects.

• It is planned that the fund will be up and running by the end of 2001. It will be open for contributions from governments, foundations, the private sector and individuals.

• Initial contributions, totalling over US$400 million, have been pledged by France, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as by Credit Suisse, the International Olympic Committee and the Secretary-General himself, who donated the proceeds of the Philadelphia Liberty Medal he will be awarded in July. Other firm commitments of serious money are expected at the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS and at the G8 summit in July 2001.

• As an innovative partnership between developing countries, donors and the multilateral system, the fund will have an independent governing body. Arrangements for the secretariat, technical advice and membership of the governing body will be decided during the next three months.

• The fund is intended to serve as a means for mobilizing, managing and disbursing new and additional resources. Exact financial targets for the fund have not been fixed. There is agreement,though, that it will not replace existing channels for financing programmes aimed against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Nor is it intended to supplant developing countries’ own investments to control these diseases.

• In early discussions there has been agreement that the fund would be underpinned by a set of principles—including the need to achieve better coordination in efforts to confront diseases, to improve the transparency and flexibility of those efforts, and to support national-level decision-making and leadership. Equally important is the opportunity to decrease the work required of national governments when dealing with a range of donors, to achieve more equitable allocation of resources and to enable a clearer focus on results.

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