No new pledges offered to cash-strapped global AIDS fund

A meeting in Paris of supporters and officials of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria ended Wednesday with no new pledges to the cash-strapped organization, leaving the fund short as much as $500 million for the current fiscal year, The New York Times reports. The fund's board agreed at the Paris meeting to limit a third round of grants set for distribution in October so that they do not exceed the amount of money the fund has on hand. More than 200 proposals from 85 countries seeking more than $2 billion in funding have been submitted to the fund's board. Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, who also serves as chairman of the fund's board, said he hoped other nations would step up their donations to the fund to help ease the cash crisis. But European leaders announced this week that they will not make any new pledges to the fund, and U.S. contributions are limited by the recently approved international AIDS initiative to account for no more than one third of the fund's total annual financial support.