The Global Fund: 5 years on

Abstract

This spring the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria announced that its programmes had treated nearly 3 million tuberculosis patients distributed more than 30 million insecticide-treated bednets and were providing antiretroviral drugs to more than 1 million people infected with HIV. After nearly 5 years of operation "Global Fund programmes are saving 3000 lives a day" says the Funds new executive director Michel Kazatchkine. The Fund was launched in 2002 to raise manage and disburse funds to fight three leading killers of people in poor countries: HIV/AIDS tuberculosis and malaria. At the time efforts to combat those diseases were fragmented and woefully underfunded. The Funds narrow focus has won it the approval of foreign-aid sceptics such as William Easterly professor of economics at New York University in New York City and author of the book White Mans Burden which critiques many current development programmes. "One of the curses of foreign aid is that each agency tries to do everything; and when you try to do everything you tend to do a mediocre or bad job" Easterly says. (excerpt)