Doctors Without Borders

Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011

3. Progress in the Fight Against HIV, TB, and Malaria Under Threat as Health Funding Falters

Donor support to fight diseases that hit the poor hardest has been waning for a while, but the announcement by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in November that it was cancelling its annual funding round because donors had not paid up was nonetheless a shock.

Countries will now have to wait until 2014—at the earliest—before they can receive new funds to put more people on treatment for HIV or drug-resistant TB, or roll out diagnostic tests for malaria, for example. The Fund has put a stop-gap solution in place that can prevent treatment interruptions in the meantime, but it’s one that leaves countries hanging on the thinnest of lifelines.

Photo: South Africa 2011 © Samantha Reinders