The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria received a hefty donation of $750 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Thursday. The foundation wants to help assure that the organization keeps providing AIDS drugs while it seeks to adjust to the economic fall.
The Global Fund has disbursed $15.1 billion to low-income countries, such as Africa, over the past decade, but in November they said they would not award any grants until 2014. Most of the Global Fund’s money is derived from governments in the industrialized world and many of them refuse to increase their donations and in some cases, are unwilling to fulfill previous pledges. Bill Gates said, “These are tough economic times, but that is no excuse for cutting aid to the world’s poorest.” Andrew Hurst, a fund spokesman, reported that the Gates donation will pay for 164,000 people to continue receiving AIDS drugs, purchase 11.4 million bed nets, and treat 427,000 cases of tuberculosis if costs remain as it was since the fund’s inception.
