10 Years of Impact

In its 10 years’ existence, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has brought treatment and prevention to millions of people. The world has moved from a mood of despair in the face of unstoppable pandemics to one of genuine hope that they can actually be beaten, and by providing nearly a quarter of all international funding to fight AIDS, two thirds of the funding against malaria and more than four fifths against TB, the Global Fund has played a central role in this turnaround.

HIV transmission rates are falling in nearly every region, including the worst affected countries. Where treatment is available, the death rate is also falling. TB mortality has fallen by more than a third since the 1990s. We are now approaching universal access to insecticide-treated nets in Africa to prevent malaria.

Some other key results:

• We have moved from virtually no-one on AIDS treatment in 2002 to a remarkable 7 million on treatment in developing countries by 2010, half of these as a result of Global Fund financing.
• The absolute number of annual TB cases has been falling since 2006 and TB incidence rates have been falling since 2002. We are on track to achieve international TB targets – with the notable exception of multi-drug-resistant TB – meaning that if these reductions are sustained, almost half the countries receiving Global Fund support will meet the Millennium Development Goal 6 targets of halving TB mortality and starting to reverse TB incidence by 2015.
• Malaria was a neglected disease at the beginning of this century. Since the massive expansion of nets’ distribution, at least twelve countries have shown a reduction of 50 per cent or more in either confirmed malaria cases or admissions and deaths in just the last few years.  The estimated number of malaria cases, taking into account population growth over time, shows a reduction of 17% globally between 2000 and 2010.

We have never been so close to achieving some remarkable health goals such as the potential elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission, the opportunity to eliminate malaria as a public health threat in most endemic countries, the control of multidrug- resistant TB and the provision of AIDS drugs to nearly all who need it – all within the next decade.