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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a catastrophic impact on the most vulnerable communities around the world and threatens to roll-back progress against HIV, TB and malaria. As a global community, we must #UniteToFight them all. The Global Fund is providing guidance, tools and immediate funding of more than US$1 billion to help countries fight COVID-19, mitigate the impacts on lifesaving HIV, TB and malaria programs, and prevent fragile health systems from being overwhelmed.
Wiping out years of progress
The stakes are extraordinarily high. In 2018, deaths from HIV, TB and malaria together amounted to 2.4 million people worldwide – roughly half the death toll of the peak of the epidemics, but still a shocking figure. Analyses from WHO, UNAIDS, the Stop TB Partnership and others suggest this annual death toll across the three diseases could nearly double in the next year, wiping out years of progress, if we do not act decisively.
The fights against COVID-19, HIV, TB and malaria are one and the same. We must #UniteToFight them all.
Credit: WHO / P. Phutpheng
ACT-Accelerator
The Global Fund is a founding partner of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), the world's largest coalition of organizations and governments to accelerate development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tools.
The Global Fund is a co-convener of both the Diagnostics and Health Systems Connector. We are also leading work on procurement and deployment in Therapeutics.
Our role in the global response
Given its role as the world’s largest multilateral investor in grants for health systems and its focus on fighting infectious diseases and strengthening health systems, the Global Fund is uniquely positioned to help countries respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate the knock-on impact on HIV, TB and malaria. In alignment with WHO’s overall leadership and coordination of the global COVID-19 response, the Global Fund’s has adopted a four-pronged response to the pandemic:
- Adapt HIV, TB and malaria programs to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and safeguard progress
- Protect front-line health workers through the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) and training to front-line health staff, including community health workers
- Reinforce systems for health so they don’t collapse by supporting urgent enhancements, including to supply chains, laboratory networks and community-led response systems, and so they are ready to roll out treatments and vaccines once available
- Fight COVID-19 by supporting control and containment interventions, including testing, tracing and the support of isolation, communications and treatment (as therapeutics become available).
Stories from the frontline
The people who #UniteToFight at the frontline are profiles in resilience and courage. The stories that follow provide intimate insight into their communities and everyday lives during the pandemic.
Rosemary's passion for saving lives remains undimmed
For Rosemary Wanjiru, a community health volunteer in Nairobi’s Soweto Village, fighting TB in the time of COVID-19 has meant making impossible choices. She walks the narrow alleyways in her neighborhood, offering lifesaving treatment and education to people even though it puts her and her family at risk. Yet her passion for saving lives remains undimmed. Rosemary's story
Defending transgender rights in Cameroon
Both HIV and COVID-19 expose sharp inequities in society and barriers that the most marginalized communities face exercising their right to health care. But these seemingly insurmountable hurdles haven’t held Kiki back from working and advocating to protect the rights of people in her community. She is the founding president of Positive Vision Cameroon, an organization that works to protect the rights of transgender people, including their right to access health care such as HIV prevention and treatment services. Kiki's story
The Global Fund / Machira Mwangi
The hidden tragedy of COVID-19
Follow 24-year-old Grace Ngulube as she takes us through the intimate lives of adolescent girls and young women affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent school closures in Malawi. “Restrictions on movement and school closures – while successful in halting the spread of COVID-19 – contributed considerably to fueling a pandemic of violence against adolescent girls and young women behind closed doors, threatening to reverse decades of progress in the fights against HIV and gender inequality.” Grace's story
Out of school and at risk
Like tens of millions of young people around the world, 17-year-old Melissa’s life was turned upside down when COVID-19 and its lockdown measures hit her town, Umguza Zimbabwe, shutting down her school for six months.
With no internet connection at home, she struggled to keep up with her studies. When her father’s shoe repair business came to an abrupt halt, she had to put herself at risk to help her family survive. Melissa's story
The Global Fund / Gary de Jong
We must #UniteToFight TB and COVID-19
India accounts for 27% all new TB cases worldwide. Until COVID-19, they had been making steady progress in the fight. Aftab Ansari is a TB survivor turned advocate who is stepping up the fight in the shadow of the pandemic.