Despite its tremendous success, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria faces serious funding gaps. As a result, in December 2011 the Global Fund was forced to cancel its next funding round, leaving recipient countries without the financial support needed to combat their disease epidemics. Furthermore, the funding crisis will leave civil society organisations without the resources needed to hold national governments to account and to create national buy-in to fund disease responses with domestic resources.
This report examines how middle-income countries, especially those in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) with a high burden of TB and HIV, will be particularly vulnerable to this reduction in funding and suggests key solutions, with a focus on what the EU can do.
Countries such as Moldova or the Ukraine have concentrated HIV epidemics, and their Governments are either unable or unwilling to fund their disease response in specific populations. There are even countries within the European Union, such as Romania, that have very high rates of tuberculosis (TB) and are seeing an increase in number of cases. Failing to adequately fund HIV and TB programmes will inevitably contribute to increasing rates of disease and drug-resistance. This will cost lives and cause an enormous drain on the economy due to increased treatment costs and lost productivity.
The world’s failure to adequately address the impact of TB and HIV is largely due to a lack of political will and financial commitment. There is an urgent need for greater leadership and accountability on these issues at a regional level. The EU has an unprecedented opportunity to take on this leadership role by stepping in to fill these funding gaps and ultimately saving people’s lives.
