Honourable Minister Motsoaledi,
Peter Sands,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
First of all I would like to say I like the replenishment slogan: “We stop at nothing to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.”
Thank you also to South Africa and the United Kingdom for co-hosting the replenishment.
As a founding partner of the Global Fund in 2003, and a member of its board ever since, for the World Health Organization, the Global Fund is family.
And for me personally, as a Minister of Health of Ethiopia, a Chair of the Global Fund board from 2009 to 2011 – in difficult times during the recession – and as Director-General of WHO, I have had a front-row seat to the difference the Global Fund can make.
We often talk about the need for investment in global health, and the Global Fund is living proof of what we can achieve when we do.
Thanks in large part to the Global Fund, HIV, TB and malaria kill half as many people now as they did 20 years ago. This is very significant progress.
But as we all know, those gains are more at risk now than at any time since the Global Fund was founded.
The sudden and unplanned cuts we have seen this year to global aid, both bilateral and multilateral, imperil progress against global health in general, and HIV, TB and malaria in particular.
Replenishing the Global Fund is therefore critical not only to protect the gains we have made, but to continue to drive progress against these three diseases.
We have opportunities including new bed nets, new mosquito control technologies, new long-acting therapeutics and, in the near future, new vaccines for TB.
But we also face significant challenges, with increasing drug and insecticide resistance, gaps in access, mis- and disinformation breeding mistrust, and the need to integrate interventions.
In our resource-constrained environment, it’s essential that we work together more closely than ever before.
Above all, we must align with country needs and support countries to transition to self-reliance based on domestic resources.
WHO remains fully committed to our partnership with the Global Fund, because its success is our success – and the world’s success.
Again, we stop at nothing to stop AIDS, TB and malaria.
I thank you.