For Immediate Release  |  November 23 2011

Contact: Matthew Kavanagh, matthew@healthgap.org, +1 202.486.2488

Donor governments vote to cancel life-saving Global Fund funding Round, betraying millions waiting in line for treatment access

(Accra) At the 25th Board Meeting of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Accra, Ghana yesterday donor governments voted to cancel the current funding Round (called “Round 11”). This shortsighted decision—which has not happened before in the Global Fund’s ten year history—comes despite game changing new scientific findings that HIV treatment not only saves lives, it reduces the risk of sexual transmission of HIV transmission by 96%. Just two weeks ago U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that ending AIDS is now official U.S. policy; just yesterday UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced significant gains in prevention—the beginning of declines in new infections—and HIV treatment—a 26% increase in access in just one year. 6.6 million people were on treatment in developing countries; however, almost 10 million more are in urgent need of treatment access. All signs, though, point to the global potential to end the AIDS crisis if we increase the speed of the response.

The Global Fund received pledges and projected contributions of $11.7 billion in 2010 for the time period 2011-13. Several donors have since then reneged on their pledges or delayed in converting their pledges to cash. (See: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/donors/replenishments/thirdreplenishmentsecondmeeting/). Pledges from Holland, Demark, Italy, Belgium, and the European Community are all lacking. Leaders in Congress have delayed U.S. funding and House Republicans are seeking to cut current levels.

“The funding window that was cancelled today would have enabled scale up of lifesaving treatment and prevention services for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria to millions of poor people in developing countries,” said Asia Russell of Health GAP. “Donors have betrayed poor people dying without access to treatment and prevention—just when the science is showing that the end of AIDS is within our grasp.”

"What is particularly scandalous about this cancellation is that donors didn't have to do it. The amounts of money we’re talking about are barely a rounding error in donor budgets and could have been mobilized in a replenishment of the Global Fund. Yet donors opposed a proposal to keep this vital funding opportunity alive, while more resources are mobilized," said Brook Baker of Health GAP. “Instead, donors are pushing the Global Fund - and the patients who rely on it - to the edge of a cliff, all to save a few billion dollars."

The activists call on deadbeat donors to immediately pay their outstanding pledges. In the United States activists called on Speaker of the House John Boehner to reverse the Republican push to leave millions of people to die by slashing U.S. funding to the Global Fund and instead work with the President to preserve U.S. leadership while also demanding other countries make good on their promises. Activists hope President Obama will use World AIDS Day to make a strong statement about U.S. commitment to multilateralism and the Fund.

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