The Executive Director of the Global Fund Professor Michel Kazatchkine met with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yodhoyono today to congratulate him for progress in fighting AIDS, TB and malaria and to request Indonesia’s support for efforts with the Global Fund’s donor countries to increase funding for the three diseases worldwide. “Indonesia is a major voice in the G-20 and its support will be very important in 2010, a critical year for global health,” says Professor Kazatchkine. “This year the Global Fund’s donors will decide if we get the resources that would allow us to reach the health-related Millennium Development Goals. We have made huge progress in recent years and could make history. But this progress is fragile and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria will gain force again unless we continue scaling up our interventions.” He added: “Indonesia has made rapid progress in fighting these diseases and can play an important role in ensuring that our progress is not reversed.”
Indonesia, as a G-20 member country, is providing a strong voice for the need to continue scaling up health investments. UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon will chair a crucial meeting in New York on October 5 this year where donor countries will pledge resources to the Global Fund for the period 2011-13.
The Global Fund and Indonesia also signed today new grant agreements amounting to over US$ 55 million to scale up the government and civil society’s response to HIV in all 33 of the country’s provinces. The new grants will be implemented by the Ministry of Health, National AIDS Commission and Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim faith-based organisation in the country.
Since its inception in 2002, the Global Fund has committed over US$ 630 million to fight the three diseases in Indonesia. It accounts for sixty five percent of total resources in the country to fight TB and malaria and forty five percent of resources to fight HIV.
No comments: