A number of publications cover the continuous trend of funding cuts for HIV, TB and malaria:
The Trump administration’s reversal of decades of progress on ending the HIV pandemic – and weakening US leadership and humanitarian effort in the fight against HIV – has already led to thousands of deaths. Every new HIV infection will incur global economic and societal costs by draining labor capacity in high-burden countries while increasing health care and caregiving costs. This global insecurity and economic instability has precedents in the initial HIV crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ensuring people living with HIV worldwide receive appropriate treatment and care advances US national security, diplomatic and economic interests. Ensuring that citizens in other countries enjoy good health permits their economies to thrive and America’s in turn.
A draft template seen by the Guardian, to be used for memorandums of understanding with partner countries, offers funding to tackle diseases such as malaria, TB, HIV and polio, as well as for activities such as surveillance, and laboratory systems and electronic health records.
It suggests that countries will be expected to gradually take over funding these areas themselves over the course of the five-year agreements.
In return, it includes conditions requiring countries to share biological specimens and genetic sequences of “pathogens with epidemic potential” with the US, within days of their identification.
Today, as the world reaches a critical juncture in the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, the EU must choose: match scientific breakthroughs with political will and investment or retreat, putting two decades of hard-won progress at risk. Having saved over 70 million lives, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has proven what smart, sustained investment can achieve.
But the impact of its work — the lives protected, the life expectancy prolonged, the systems strengthened, the innovations deployed — is now under threat due to declining international funding.
The UK is expected to pledge £850m towards the Global Fund’s work over the next three years – a 15 per cent reduction compared with the previous pledge of £1bn in 2022, which itself was down from a pledge of £1.4bn in 2019.
The World Health Organization (WHO) released new guidance for countries on ways to counter the immediate and long-term effects of sudden and severe cuts to external funding, which are disrupting the delivery of essential health services in many countries.
The new guidance, called “Responding to the health financing emergency: immediate measures and longer-term shifts”, provides a suite of policy options for countries to cope with the sudden financing shocks, and bolster efforts to mobilize and implement sufficient and sustainable financing for national health systems.
