AFRO-NETS> Feachem Says Global Fund Could Dry Up By the Middle of Next Year

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Feachem Says Global Fund Could Dry Up By the Middle of Next Year
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Richard Feachem, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercu-
losis and Malaria, said that the fund will run out of money by the 
middle of next year unless it receives new donations, the Boston 
Globe reports. The fund has received $2.1 billion in pledges but has 
collected only $500 million. Earlier this year, the fund's board ap-
proved $616 million in grants in the first round of applications and 
is set to review the second round of projects in January. However, no 
"substantial" pledges have been made to the fund for months, and do-
nations from the private sector are particularly low, the Globe re-
ports. Feachem said, "The danger is we would make round two awards at 
the end of January that we ultimately couldn't finance. Round three 
in June is when the crunch is really going to hit.... We can't go on 
making commitments to fund projects without being dead sure we have 
the money." Feachem also announced that auditing firms KPMG, Crown 
Agents and PriceWaterhouseCoopers will monitor the fund's spending 
for programs in some developing countries 
(Donnelly, Boston Globe, 10/7).


Fund 'Hobbled'?

The Global Fund was meant to be "an unprecedented partnership between 
rich nations and multinational companies to vanquish" AIDS, TB and 
malaria, but it has raised "only a sliver of the money it needs" and 
is "hobbled" by structural requirements, Toronto Globe and Mail for-
eign affairs writer Stephanie Nolen writes in an opinion piece. In 
addition to a lack of money, the fund faces trouble because it was 
created to be independent of other multilateral entities such as the 
United Nations, Nolen states, noting that although the fund cannot 
use existing multilateral organizations to help manage its spending 
and has had to create its own infrastructure, accounting and procure-
ment operations, donors want the fund to be "light" and "poised to 
disburse funds fast." She notes that there are other conflicts re-
garding which countries should receive money from the fund and 
whether the governments that receive funding from the organization 
should meet certain criteria. Nolen concludes that if the fund in its 
current state is the "radical solution, things don't bode well for 
the problem" of how to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria 
(Nolen, Toronto Globe and Mail, 10/5). 

--
Claudio Schuftan
Hanoi, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn

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