African leaders will lobby the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for more money Wednesday to solve a cash crunch facing its work, seen as vital for the continent's health, officials said.
Presidents Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Kenya's Mwai Kibaki will try to secure funding when they attend the annual meeting of the fund's board in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
"The four presidents are here to state what the region needs in terms of aid and, we hope, to convince the board that Africa needs this funding," Jon Liden, head of communications at the Global Fund, told Reuters late Tuesday.
The fund, an independent private-public partnership that raises and disburses new funds to battle the three killers, needs at least $2.5 billion in 2005, up from $1.5 billion last year. It has received pledges of only $900 million, he said.
The United States says it is opposed to the launch of a fifth round of funding because the money is unavailable. It also says the fund has been unable to manage project funds efficiently. U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson is currently the chairman of the fund and will be at the meeting.
Activists say any delay of the fifth round of funding would be disastrous to the Global Fund and a deathblow to millions of people suffering from Malaria, AIDS and TB.
Non-governmental organizations and other activists plan demonstrations outside the meeting's venue to urge the board to approve the funding.
"We will bring our voices, our bodies, outside of the conference center to face the board members from rich countries that will be deciding whether the millions of people waiting for treatment will have to wait even longer," activist James Kamau said.
Most of the money committed by the fund since it was launched in 2001 has gone to fight HIV/AIDS, which has killed 20 million people in the past two decades.
The G8 group of industrialized nations declared in 2003 that the fund should get $3 billion a year, with French President Jacques Chirac proposing $1 billion from Europe, $1 billion from the United States and $1 billion from other countries.
But donations to the Geneva-based partnership have fallen short of such pledges, amid tensions between Washington and other governments over the best way of tackling AIDS.