Last week we profiled the Global Fund to Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. This week, we look at a supporting group to their efforts.
Recent speeches given by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could not have come at a better time for Friends of the Global Fund to Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Since its founding in 2004, the organization has served as a funding advocate in the United States for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
"Simply put, our main goal is to ensure that the Global Fund continues to receive the funding it needs to do its lifesaving work from the United States," Natasha Bilimoria, president of Friends, explained. "Our relationship, while it is separate, we are not part of the Global Fund, we work on their behalf and are their eyes and ears here in Washington, and also critical strategic advisors to them."
The organization has worked successfully for nearly 10 years, seeing the United States' contribution to the Global Fund grow from $300 million to more than $1 billion. To achieve this incredible growth Bilimoria said a great deal of education has been needed. The staff of less than 12 individuals works closely with policy makers and their key staff on sharing the Global Fund's success stories as well as sharing information on scientific advancements in treatment of HIV/AIDS.
When the organization first began, political leaders from both parties as well as former President Bush were working together to build strong bipartisan support for HIV/AIDS funding. Each year the United States' funding grew and prevention and treatment efforts expanded around the world.
Today, as countries deal with the global economic crisis, Bilimoria and other leaders in the HIV/AIDS fight worry that funding from some of its largest donors could be reduced. It is especially important for the U.S. to continue its leadership role and funding levels as every $1 contributed from the U.S. is leveraged to garner $2 from other countries.
That is why she said Obama's and Clinton's remarks were so critical. Obama reiterated his administration's commitment to AIDS funding and challenged other countries to keep their promises and give the money they previously pledged. She hopes that members of Congress will be equally committed.
"We've got a much more difficult economic environment, and we've got a very complicated political environment. The people that were here when the Global Fund and PEPFAR were created, the members of Congress, many of those people are gone now. In this year especially, we had a whole new crop of people that needed to be educated. The bottom line is that most of the people that were elected into Congress last year were not elected because of foreign policy issues," she said.
Bilimoria said that Friends is focused on trying to create new "champions" to help continue bipartisan support. She said that her organization has really had to start back at square one in educating the new policy makers on the Global Fund and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention advancements.
"We need more people to understand how critical United States support is for these programs. Again, it is a very difficult budgetary time and we have less money and more things to do. But, the pot of money that this stuff comes out of is a miniscule part of the budget. It is less than 1 percent of the entire U.S. budget, and what we are seeing is really just phenomenal results, millions of lives have been saved because of the generosity of the U.S. government and its taxpayers, both through the Global Fund and the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [ PEPFAR ] .
"I think that if people know about this and really understand how this funding has been so critical, not only have we saved these lives, but by saving lives we have also allowed communities to rebuild themselves and to become stronger. With stronger communities, we get stronger economies. It has really created this incredible domino effect of positive development," she said.
UNAIDS recently released its annual report, which stated that the number of people dying of HIV/AIDS complications had fallen from a peak of 2.2 million to 1.8 million in 2010.
Andy Seale, senior advisor for gender and sexual diversity at the Global Fund, reported, "We reached 100 percent of our targets for people receiving anti-retroviral therapy [ in 2010 ] , we exceeded the targets we'd set ourselves for HIV testing and counseling, and also around support to orphans and other vulnerable children and we did very well, around 94 percent of our targets, when it came to some of the HIV prevention initiatives like prevention of mother-to-child transmission and condom distribution. When you look at what we've been able to achieve since 2002, it's been fairly significant."
Bilimoria agrees. "We really are at an incredibly critical moment in time right now … there is a huge amount of science that has come about, very much in the past several months, and I think the science is giving us this incredible opportunity to have this very strong impact on the disease," she said. "This whole idea and concept of an AIDS-free generation is a real possibility and I think the science is telling us that.
"We have all of the tools to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, we know how to do it, but we need that continued support to make sure countries are able to continue that work and expand the work so we can ensure that no baby is born with HIV by 2015. These continued investments are critical, because global health is really something that needs to be sustained so that we continue to not only see the progress we've had, but also reach these very achievable goals."
Despite real threats to funding, Bilimoria is hopeful that the President's recent commitment, a historic multiyear pledge, and call for others to continue their support, will allow HIV/AIDS programs to turn an important corner in the effort to achieve an AIDS-free generation.
"We are absolutely capable of having an AIDS-free generation," she said. "That depends on continued political will and sustained funding, and it is a hard time to do that because of the global economic crisis, but, again, I think with both the president and the secretary of state putting out that commitment so publicly, I think that's an incredibly important step forward. I am optimistic that we will be able to continue to achieve some really great things."
