Progress in fight against HIV, TB, and malaria is backsliding in some of the places MSF operates
The global fight against the three main killer diseases—HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria—has ground to a halt. In recent years, teams with the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) around the world have seen worrying signs of a reversal in progress against all three diseases.
To prevent further backsliding, donor countries must increase their pledges at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria’s replenishment conference in New York this week.
The $18 billion asked for by the Global Fund—a crucial funding mechanism in the global fight against these three major infectious diseases—is the bare minimum of what is needed. Even if the Global Fund gets the $18 billion it's asking for, it won't be enough to prevent people across the world from needlessly dying from these infectious diseases.
An estimated $130 billion is needed for HIV, TB, and malaria for the period 2024-26. With the Global Fund supplying 14 percent of that budget—assuming that $18 billion is raised—and other external funding supplying another 19 percent, domestic funding should account for 45 percent. This leaves a huge gap of 22 percent. But at present, it looks very unlikely that enough domestic funding will be mobilized to cover 45 percent of the $130 billion. With overly optimistic expectations for domestic funding, we can expect an actual gap that is much bigger than the predicted 22 percent.
This situation should come as no surprise. In 2019, MSF published a report warning that the HIV and TB responses had come to a standstill, largely because the world was too optimistic about how much of the financing for programs to combat the diseases could be shouldered by low- and middle-income countries.
