Open Letter to the G7 Ministers of Finance gathered in Rome

Dear Ministers,
We write as global health civil society groups, advocates, and researchers from around the world to urge the governments of the G7 to move immediately to fill the funding gap faced by the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
This year, the Global Fund is scaling up with bigger and higher quality proposals and just approved the largest funding round ever.
The Global Fund provides a quarter of all international financing for AIDS globally, two-thirds for tuberculosis, and three-quarters for malaria. In 2009 and 2010, the Fund will continue this huge success and expects that $8 billion will be needed to fully fund all approved programs.
This success meets the world's hopes—but donor funding has not yet caught up, leaving a $5 billion gap in pledges from donors. In this time of economic crisis, developing countries are hit hard - and investments in AIDS, TB, and malaria are essential to the well-being of nations. The diseases already have a huge impact on developing countries. Loss of productivity due to tuberculosis drains $16 billion from the annual incomes of the world's poorest communities, while resource needs to fight the disease are estimated to be $4.2 billion in 2009. The economic impacts of malaria are estimated to cost African countries $12 billion per year in lost GDP; compare that to $3.4 billion needed to prevent such losses. Finally, AIDS threatens to reduce GDP in African countries by up to 2.6%.
We must keep investing in these countries and particularly in initiatives that get proven returns; the Global Fund provides value for money invested with its results-driven programming and its transparent and accountable funding structures.
Since its inception in 2001, the Global Fund estimates that it has been responsible for:
• Providing anti-retroviral treatments (ARVs) for 2 million people living with HIV/AIDS
• Detecting and treating 4.6 million cases of infectious TB
• Distributing 70 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 74 million malaria drug treatments
We remind global leaders that the Global Fund has always been demand driven. The Board of the Global Fund determined that if more demand led to more, better proposals deserving of funding, resource mobilization would be needed (GF/B15/DP16). All G7 countries are represented on the Board of the Global Fund and have agreed in principle to “mobilize the resources necessary to meet increased demand expressed in the submission of quality proposals to the Global Fund.” 2010 is the halfway point to the date set to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and is thus an important time to mark progress and increase efforts to make sure that the promises made to the people of the world are kept.
The know-how and ability to run successful programs that will save lives has been ramped up in developing countries. It is now time for leaders of the G7 to ramp up their commitments to meet that demand and to ensure that the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has the resources to continue saving millions of lives.
We urge the G7 Finance Ministers and their representatives in Rome to commit to fully funding the Global Fund and to bring new pledges to the table at April’s Global Fund replenishment meeting in Spain.
Signed,
Health GAP (Global Access Project), USA
RESULTS Canada, Canada
RESULTS Educational Fund, USA
International Civil Society Support, Netherlands