Donors Raise Nearly $10 Billion for Global Fund

Donors pledged nearly $10 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria on Thursday, less than the fund says it needs over the next three years, although officials said that they were pleased and more money was expected later.

The conference chairman, former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, said the pledges of $9.7 billion from governments and private donors was a conservative figure and would rise significantly, because some countries made pledges for only one or two years and could add more later.

''Some countries cannot pledge or cannot pledge fully,'' Annan said at a news conference following the one-day meeting in Berlin. ''So I expect this $10 billion to go up considerably.''

He said the fight against the diseases required effort and contributions by all. ''We have an enormous challenge, and this requires enormous social mobilization by everybody,'' he said.

A midterm conference will be held in 2009, halfway through the three-year period for which the fund is seeking pledges. Budget procedures prevent some countries from pledging more than one year at a time, and that means more money may come in later, officials said.

Annan said he was ''very pleased with the pledges made at this meeting. With these new resource pledges, the global community has taken a significant step toward achieving the goals we have set for fighting these diseases.''

Ahead of the meeting, the Global Fund said it expected initial commitments of between $7 billion and $8 billion to finance the fight against the three diseases between 2008 and 2010.

It has estimated that it needs funding totaling between $12 billion and $18 billion over that period.

According to Annan, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $300 million, while France pledged $1.7 billion and Germany $849 million.

Among other contributions, Russia pledged $217 million, the Netherlands $325 million, Norway $240 million, Italy $551 million, China $6 million, and India $7 million.

Annan said the United States and Canada have yet to pledge but that it is estimated they will eventually contribute $2.17 billion and $375 million, respectively.

The Global Fund said before the donor meeting that its success would determine whether the world community has ''any realistic chance of meeting the targets it has set to reduce the impact of these diseases.''

It noted that leaders of the Group of Eight -- currently chaired by Germany -- have committed themselves to get as close as possible to universal access to AIDS prevention and treatment by 2010, while the United Nations hopes to halve the numbers of people infected with TB and killed by malaria by 2015.

The Global Fund was an initiative conceived by the world's richest governments at the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy, where they pledged to step up funding to fight HIV/AIDS and other global epidemics.

The fund, a public-private partnership, says it currently provides 20% of international financing for programs against AIDS and two thirds of financing for programs against tuberculosis and malaria. (AP)