The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of the world's biggest sources of funding against the diseases, said Friday that it will need to triple in size by 2010. The Fund's board agreed at a meeting to raise its spending target to six billion dollars a year to meet projected demand, it said in a statement. Further increased demand for financing from developing countries could potentially raise the figure to eight billion dollars, it added. [Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Fund] dubbed the decision by representatives of donor and recipient governments, aid groups, and the private sector … ‘a vote of confidence’ in the Fund's work. ‘Programs we support are currently saving 3,000 lives per day,’ he said. … The board recognized that the expansion would require significant additional contributions from new and existing public and private sources, as well as ‘innovative’ financing mechanisms.


Since its creation in 2002, the fund has become the dominant source of money for worldwide programs against the three scourges that kill more than 6 million people a year, mostly in poor countries. Donors to the Geneva-based body, which has to date committed $7.1 billion across 136 countries, are due to meet in Berlin in September to discuss funding for the 2008-2010 period. The Global Fund said it would seek donations from new countries as well as businesses to help meet its new target.”