Only the USA will pay more on global health - with our contribution aiming to save 'a life every three minutes'.
The UK has pledged to save “a life every three minutes” with a major new aid commitment to fight some of the world’s most devastating preventable diseases.
More than £1bn will be spent over the next three years on global health initiatives, through the flagship Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.
The pledge doubles the Government’s current commitment to the fund, and makes the UK the second biggest donor after the USA.
Justine Greening, the international development secretary, said that fighting preventable disease was “in all of our interests.”
The Global Fund, set up in 2002, is already estimated to have saved 8.7 million lives, with 5.3 million people now receiving antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV; 11 million new TB cases detected and treated and 340 million insecticide treated nets distributed to protect families from malaria.
Over the next three years, the UK will deliver lifesaving antiretroviral treatment to an additional 750,000 living with HIV, 32 million more insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent transmission of malaria, and TB treatment for more than a million people.
The Department for International Development estimates that the UK’s new funding commitment will save 590,400 lives between 2014 and 2016 – or one every three minutes.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose philanthropic foundation was instrumental in setting up the Fund, said that other donors should “follow the example of the UK”.
The Global Fund is the world’s biggest financer of programs to prevent, treat and care for people with HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. The UK was a founding donor, and committed £1bn from 2008 to 2015, a grant which the new funding commitment renews.
