GLOBAL HEALTH | Addressing the world’s health challenges
14 November 2008
Global Health Leaders Urge Continued Aid During Financial Turmoil
Spending cuts could undermine investment in AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria
Washington — Less than a month after officials from countries around the world traveled to Washington to attend the October 21 White House Summit on International Development, another group of leaders will meet to discuss the financial turmoil that could derail critical progress made to date on diseases that threaten global health and security.
The Group of Twenty (G20) finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 industrial and emerging-market countries and the European Union, plus officials of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, will address the current crisis and lay the foundation for reforms in meetings November 14–15.
As global financial and economic difficulties deepen, those most involved in promoting the buildup of health systems in developing nations and fighting deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are urging governments to keep up their investments in the health sector.
“When times are hard, as they are now, every nation is focused on protecting its own interests,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said October 21. “That is entirely legitimate and it is to be expected. But what we cannot do — what we must not do — is to allow our generosity and our concern for others to fall victim to today’s crisis. Reneging on our commitments to the world’s poor cannot be an austerity measure.”
PROTECTING THE POOR
The United States, whose own financial turbulence has evolved into an increasingly far-reaching economic crisis affecting countries around the world, is a leading contributor to a range of disease-fighting initiatives in the poorest nations.
Since 2001, the United States has pledged more than $4 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a partnership among governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities that was created to attract, manage and disburse resources to fight these diseases.
In Africa, treatable, preventable malaria kills one child every 30 seconds. In 2005, President Bush launched a five-year, $1.2 billion initiative to help cut in half the number of malaria-related deaths in 15 African nations. The initiative has reached 25 million people and the numbers of those sick or dying from malaria have dropped dramatically in Zambia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and elsewhere in the region.
The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which targets HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, is helping turn the tide against HIV/AIDS. Bush in July signed into law a five-year extension of the program, which was launched in 2003 as a five-year, $15 billion multifaceted approach to fighting the worldwide disease.
The new legislation increased the U.S. financial commitment, authorizing up to $48 billion from 2009 to 2013 — the largest commitment by any nation to fight a single disease.
“It is quite rare in international development that you can measure the impact of actions,” Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS, said during an October 28 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This has been the case when it comes to PEPFAR. It is unprecedented in international development and has saved and is still saving millions of lives.”
ENDURING PRIORITY
Today, the United States supports treatment for nearly 1.7 million people in Africa and tens of thousands more around the world, from Asia to the Caribbean to Eastern Europe. PEPFAR has supported care for more than 6.6 million people worldwide.
At the Summit on International Development, Bush urged both parties in Congress to ensure that such development efforts remain an enduring U.S. priority, and called on other nations, other Global Fund contributors, corporations, foundations and faith-based groups to continue their generosity toward nations in need.
At the World Health Organization, Director-General Margaret Chan said November 12 that the consequences of the severe financial crisis are global and called for nations to counter the period of economic downturn by increasing investments in health and the social sector.
Such action, she said, would protect the poor, promote economic recovery and social stability, generate efficiency and build security.
“A world that is greatly out of balance in health is neither stable nor secure,” Chan said. “Robust health systems are essential to maintain surveillance and response capacity in the face of pandemic threats. The lack of investment in sub-Saharan African health systems in the 1980s meant they were tragically unprepared for the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the decade that followed.”
THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION
In the United States, responsibility for international health assistance soon will shift with the peaceful transfer of power from one presidential administration to the next. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will become the nation’s 44th president.
“We are in great hands at the moment, particularly from an HIV perspective and from a broader development perspective,” Ambassador Mark Dybul, U.S. global AIDS coordinator, said during a November 12 briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“President-elect Obama was a co-sponsor of PEPFAR reauthorization — one of the people who signed on to the bill,” he said. “And I’ll always think of Vice President-elect Biden as Chairman Biden because of his extraordinary role in [international] development for 35 years, pushing the agendas that so many of us in this room care about.” Biden a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired the panel from 2001 to 2003 and has chaired it again since 2006.
On their transition Web site, Obama and Biden say they will take the lead at the next G8 meeting of major industrial nations to launch Health Infrastructure 2020, a global effort to work with developing countries to invest in the full range of infrastructure needed to improve and protect U.S. and global health.
“We should never give up on America’s leadership,” Piot said. “This is absolutely vital and it must continue. That’s what I expect from the next administration because it means so clearly the difference between life and death.”
