Flash quote: MSF UK reaction to UK's Global Fund pledge
Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is disappointed with the UK Government’s reduced pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, announced today.
"We are disappointed that the UK has chosen to reduce its pledge to the Global Fund.
The Global Fund is the world's largest funder of prevention, treatment, and care programs for TB, HIV and malaria - which remain the three deadliest infectious diseases globally, and which disproportionally affect people living in the lowest income countries. Estimates are that the Global Fund has saved 70 million lives and reduced the combined death rate from AIDS, TB and malaria by 63% since 2002. Reduction in investment in the Global Fund will put millions of lives at risk. MSF teams will be unable to fill the gaps left behind and the impact that we will inevitably see in many of the places we work.
In this era of massive aid cuts from other countries, the UK had an opportunity to continue to support some of the world's most vulnerable populations. Instead, despite being the co-host of the Eighth Replenishment Summit, the UK has chosen not to help accelerate the fight to end AIDS, TB and malaria, and to leave humanitarian organisations like MSF to pick up the pieces."
- Dr Natalie Roberts, Executive Director, MSF UK.
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Editors’ notes:
- The UK has a long history of supporting global health and is the current co-host of the 8th Global Fund Replenishment Summit.
- With full replenishment, the Global Fund can save 23 million lives and halve the death toll from these three preventable diseases in just six years.
- MSF is already witnessing the effects of restricted funding where it works. Insufficient funding for the Global Fund could see data collection systems, which monitor disease incidence and service delivery, suffer, and could severely impact the global HIV, TB and malaria response[TH4] . Crucially, the Global Fund currently supports 76% of the worldwide donor response for TB. In addition, the adoption of promising new tools, such as new TB vaccines, new medication to treat malaria in newborns and new, ground breaking HIV prevention tools like lenacapavir, will be limited. Most devastatingly, inadequate support from donors like the UK forces the financial burden of healthcare onto the world’s most vulnerable people.