The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a UN-related organization whose purpose is to finance programs that purport to prevent and treat patients with AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, three major threats to health on a global scale. The Fund itself does not implement such programs; it merely finances them. The first Executive Director of the Global Fund is Richard Feachem.

Political leaders originally conceived the Fund at the 2000 G8 Summit, at the urging of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. The first Secretariat was established in January, 2002. The September 2005 conference in London mobilized 3 billion Euro, just over half the pledges at the Gleneagles G8 summit.

The United States is contributing $1 billion to the fund, but has decided to divert the bulk of its AIDS funding to the President's Emergency Plan for Aids, PEPFAR, in order to more closely control the allocation of funds. The Bush government has been criticized for allocating funding for abstinence-only prevention programs that are not proven to effectively reduce infection rates, and for refusing to purchase cheaper generic drugs that would allow for more treatments than more expensive brand-name drugs.

In January of 2006, Bono and Bobby Shriver announced the launching of the Product Red campaign, proceeds from which would go to the Global Fund.

Sources and External links

• Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
• De Standaard (Dutch-language quality newspaper) 12 September 2005

AIDS activism