My friends Don Kaberuka and Peter Sands,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
It is my great honour to be here with you today.
I thank President Biden and the US Government for its outstanding leadership in hosting this crucial meeting.
I’m proud to speak today on behalf of the technical partners of the Global Fund Board: UNAIDS, the Stop TB Partnership, the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, UNITAID, the World Bank and of course, the World Health Organization.
Consider this: in Japan, life expectancy is more than 84 years. In Lesotho, it’s 50 years – a gap of 34 years between the countries with the world’s longest and shortest life expectancies.
Much of that difference is due to the fact that HIV, TB and malaria still kill millions in the poorest communities of the poorest countries.
Thanks in large part to the Global Fund, these diseases kill half as many people now as they did 20 years ago. That’s progress.
However, those gains are at risk.
Even before COVID-19, progress against all three diseases had slowed or stalled, and the pandemic has set us further back.
Wars, humanitarian emergencies, drug and insecticide resistance and climate change just make things worse.
These overlapping challenges make the Global Fund’s support all the more important.
Investments in HIV, TB and malaria will deliver returns far beyond these three diseases, in stronger health systems, more inclusive societies, and more productive economies.
As a Minister of Health, as Chair of the Global Fund board, and as Director-General of WHO, I have had a front-row seat to the difference the Global Fund can make. I’m a living witness.
Yesterday, my friend Bono described this replenishment as a referendum on ourselves.
Who are we? What kind of world do we really want? And what are we prepared to invest to get it?
If the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s that health is not a luxury for the rich; not a cost to be contained; but a fundamental human right, and the foundation for a healthier, safer and fairer future.
Let’s all invest in that future today.
I thank you.