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Bill Gates Grants $500 Million for AIDS Care
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation took its support of AIDS-related research and care to a new level Wednesday, announcing a $500 million grant to an international fund that provides AIDS assistance in poor countries.
The Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will receive the grant over five years.
The gift dwarfs the $150 million that the charity already has given since the Global Fund was created four years ago, and the additional $287 million the foundation announced last month to speed development of an AIDS vaccine.
The fund "is one of the most important health initiatives in the world today," Bill Gates said in a statement announcing the gift. "We need to do everything we can to support its continued success, which will save millions of lives."
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The announcement comes as nearly 25,000 scientists, advocates and policy-makers prepare to meet in Toronto this weekend for the 16th International AIDS Conference.
Governments have been the main contributors to the Global Fund, whose total income to date is $9 billion. But this falls far short of what is needed, fund organizers say, and the level of support from rich nations, especially the United States, has been controversial.
"When the richest man on earth provides such generous support for the Global Fund, the risk is that some donor governments may mistakenly think they are now off the hook," Joanne Carter of Results, an advocacy organization, said in a statement representing a coalition of such groups.
However, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, said she hoped the grant would spur more money from others, not less.
"We hope all donors - public and private, large and small - will step up their support and make long-term commitments," she said in a statement.
So far, 132 countries have received money from the Global Fund. About 544,000 people have received treatment for AIDS and more than 1.4 million others for tuberculosis. More than 11 million bed nets have been given out to prevent bites from the mosquitoes that spread malaria.
"The impact of the Global Fund can be seen in towns and villages throughout Rwanda," says a statement by that country's president, Paul Kagame. "Thousands of people who would otherwise be dead are healthy and working to build a better future for their families and our country." The new Gates Foundation gift "sends a strong message about the importance of sustainability" of such funds, said Richard Feachem, the Global Fund's executive director. Instead of one-time provision of AIDS drugs, the gift demonstrates "an unprecedented moral commitment to sustain this treatment until death," he said.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
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