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  • African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI) Meeting in Ghana The fifth annual international conference of the African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI) will be held Nov. 9-11 in Accra, Ghana, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. The theme of this year's conference will be improving maternal, newborn, and child health in Africa, which will be discussed by top experts from around the world. ASADI V will kick off with the release of Science in Action: Saving the Lives of Africa's Mothers, Newborns, and Children, a new report by several African science academies, assessing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing maternal and childhood mortality -- the focus of U.N. Millennium Development Goals Four and Five -- in sub-Saharan Africa. The report will include estimates of lives that could be saved if proven scientific methods reached more parts of Africa. 11/9
  • Meeting HIV/AIDS Cost Demands: Is The Global Response Working? The November/December 2009 edition of Health Affairs focuses on key global health challenges – including the economic, political, scientific and ethical ones – facing world policymakers in their response to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Over the next several years, the world could face a funding shortfall that would prevent millions more with HIV/AIDS from gaining access to antiretroviral drugs. Yet over the long-term, the world could also take critical steps to slash the global burden of HIV-AIDS – and the costs of battling the pandemic – by half. 11/10
  • Meeting HIV/AIDS Cost Demands: Is The Global Response Working? The November/December 2009 edition of Health Affairs focuses on key global health challenges – including the economic, political, scientific and ethical ones – facing world policymakers in their response to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Over the next several years, the world could face a funding shortfall that would prevent millions more with HIV/AIDS from gaining access to antiretroviral drugs. Yet over the long-term, the world could also take critical steps to slash the global burden of HIV-AIDS – and the costs of battling the pandemic – by half. 11/10

UNAIDS Director Calls For G8 To Come Through On HIV/AIDS Funding Pledges

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Thursday, July 02, 2009

Michel Sidibe, the executive director of UNAIDS, voiced concerns that wealthy nations who previously pledged to help Africa stop the spread of HIV/AIDS during the G8 summit four years ago, might instead use funds to bolster their own ailing economies, Reuters reports. "Before this financial crisis, the world came together and this solidarity helped put more than 3.5 million people on treatment," Sidibe told reporters during the African Union summit in Sirte, Libya. "I am very concerned because ... the leaders of this world have the political obligation, or responsibility to really fix the market but they have also the moral obligation to not abandon those ... people on treatment and not to break the hope of the 14 million (AIDS) orphans," he said.

Reuters writes: "At the G8 summit in the Scottish town of Gleneagles in 2005, the world's wealthiest industrialised democracies promised to provide universal access to anti-HIV drugs in Africa by 2010 – an undertaking costing billions of dollars," yet "[e]ven before the global downturn, non-governmental groups that campaign on AIDS said the G8 states were not providing adequate funding to meet their target."

As an example of funding shortcomings for international HIV/AIDS programs, Sidibe pointed out that Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is about "$4 billion short of the amount it needed to fund AIDS projects it was already running or had committed to financing," according to Reuters (Lowe, 7/1).

The Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report is published by the Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2009 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.