Global Fund’s mission supported by Gates

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have announced a donation of $500 million as a booster dose for world’s deadliest diseases. The announcement was made four days before Bill gates is planned to address at the opening of the mammoth International AIDS Conference that will bring 24,000 scientists, activists and others to Toronto.

The foundation came forward to battle against AIDS and other two deadly diseases that are devastating the developing world.

The donation of $500 million will go to United Nations' Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The donation will flow over five years.

These three diseases are the most pernicious. A report released yesterday revealed that if these three baneful diseases combine together, then they have even more devastating results. The ailments kill 6 million people in Africa and other developing regions each year.

Richard Feachem, Fund Executive Director, said that the donation made by Bill Gates and his wife is less than what the UN fund requires in order to fulfill all its demands. The fund is still short of $1.5 billion what it needs this year and in 2007. However, the donation is the largest ever charity given by a foundation formed by wealthy people, who in turn get tax breaks.

Lisa Hartford of Toronto-based Imagine Canada, which helps charities and non-profit organizations with fundraising and achieving their goals, said that this country's biggest charitable foundation, the Montreal-based Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation, donates about $20 million (Canadian) a year, in total for charities. She further said that the gift given by Bill Gates and his wife is mind blowing.

The Global Fund was founded in 2001. Since then, the fund has provided AIDS drugs to more than 544,000 people; distributed 11 million bed nets to protect children from mosquito-borne malaria; and used state-of-the-art approaches to treat more than 1.4 million people from tuberculosis. Its efforts span 132 countries, including the worlds most impoverished.

Feachem said that this huge donation will help to strengthen health systems, support HIV-prevention work and develop many other lifesaving services.

Bill Gates describes the Global Fund as one of the most important health initiatives in the world. The fund is a private foundation and acts as a pipe to direct money from developed nations, foundations and wealthy donors to people who need it most. Its main goal is to scale up health programs already proved effective, such as insecticide-treated bed nets and new drugs that attack disease-resistant forms of malaria.

The fund also trains workers to take care of children orphaned by AIDS. Since the time the fund was opened, it has assets worth $10 billon, out of which, half has already been put to use. Majority of money has come from United States, European nations and Japan.