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)
