HEALTH: Billions More Dollars Needed to Save Lives

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Oct 1 2007 (IPS) - A further 9.7 billion dollars agreed last week for a global fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria may still not be enough.

Developed countries, financial institutions and private companies agreed the new funding for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM) at a meeting here. The funding covers 2008-2011.

Since its creation in 2002, the Fund will have channelled some 4.7 billion dollars until next year into health campaigns across the globe to fight the three diseases.

"We have saved some two million lives over the past five years," GFATM director Michel Kazatchkine told the meeting.

The GFATM has over this period provided grants for 450 programmes in 136 countries. These programmes include providing antiretroviral treatment to some 800,000 people infected with AIDS, distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria, and treatment for about two million people with tuberculosis.

These three diseases kill 17,000 people every day. The death toll would be far higher without the efforts of the GFATM.

The new funding is a boost, but the Fund needs between 12 to 18 billion dollars for 2008-2011, by conservative estimates. The Berlin meeting Sep. 26-28 was the first of a series of financing activities to reach this target.

Germany has taken the first step. Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, minister for international cooperation and development, announced that the German government will double its allocation for the GFATM to 600 million euros (over 800 million dollars).

Wieczorek-Zeul said Germany would also start a debt swap programme with developing countries to increase their financial resources.

The programme, "debt2health", means that Germany would to begin with not enforce repayment of about 50 million euros (70 million dollars) debt from Indonesia. In exchange, Indonesia would allocate half that money for the fight against the three diseases.

The German government plans expansion of this programme to cover other developing countries such as Peru, Kenya and Pakistan to the extent of 200 million euros.

Despite such moves, there is a long way to go. The UN joint programme against HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says that the fight against AIDS alone needs at least a further 14 to 18 billion dollars to provide treatment for eight million people by 2015.

But for universal access to antiretroviral and other therapies by 2010, up to 51 billion dollars is required. "This approach envisages significant increases in available resources and an urgent and dramatic scale-up of coverage in all countries, (and) would provide treatment for 14 million people by 2010," UNAIDS said.

More money is needed also to fight the other diseases. "Half of the world&#39s population lives in zones considered high risk for malaria," German development policy expert Monika Hoegen told IPS.

Every year, malaria kills between one and two million people, and infects up to 500 million. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

With global warming provoking new floods and inundations in these areas, an explosion of new malaria infections is likely in coming years, UN climate experts have warned.

In the case of tuberculosis, the main problem lies in the pharmaceutical industry&#39s failure to develop new drugs, says Oliver Moldenhauer, a German physician with the non-governmental organisation Doctors without Borders.

"The most effective drug available against tuberculosis was developed in 1970," Moldenhauer told IPS. "Newer drugs against this disease are more expensive, and less effective than the older ones."

Moldenhauer said the pharmaceutical industry&#39s failure to develop new drugs can only be explained by the fact that tuberculosis is seen as "a poor man&#39s disease." Tuberculosis kills nearly two million people a year.

"Between 1975 and 1999, the pharmaceutical industry patented and brought into the market 1,393 new drugs," Moldenhauer said. "Of these, only three were aimed at fighting tuberculosis."

Resistance to existing tuberculosis drugs is growing at a rapid pace, with some 450,000 new cases of drug resistance reported every year. "It is urgent to accelerate drug discovery through the public sector or by the non-profit sector," Moldenhauer said.