Crisis hits AIDS funding

In anticipation for the 2010 XVIII International AIDS Conference (IAC), starting July 18 and running until July 23, Médecin sans Frontières (MSF) presented a report denouncing donor countries for scaling back on funding to AIDS initiatives.

According to MSF, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria reported it is far from reaching its funding goal or 20 billion dollars (15 billion Euros). Currently the association has only raised 100 million dollars (77 million Euros) a far cry from its objective.

“Despite the progress that has been made…international donors, for the moment, are showing less interest and less willingness to continue to support the fight against HIV,” said Mit Philips, author of the MSF report. “It’s as though they want to abandon the fight halfway through,” she added.

MSF acknowledges that the economic crisis has played a role in donor cut backs but worries about the impact that this will have on the most venerable to the disease, those living in developing countries.

Where patients get treatment, “there is an overall reduction of mortality in the community, there is also less tuberculosis and we start to see, where there is a high coverage of [anti-retroviral drugs] ARV, also a reduction in the number of new cases (of HIV/AIDS),” said Phillips.

MSF highlighted that in Africa, the continent the most affected by the epidemic, there are 3 million people living with HIV/AIDS who have access to ARV but there are an additional 6 million without access.  By reducing funding fewer patients would have access to the drug.

The conference will bring together those working in the field of HIV, as well as policy makers, persons living with HIV and other individuals committed to ending the pandemic. The objective of the conference is to insure that despite the global economic crisis that HIV is kept on a front burner of political agendas.