E-DRUG: MSF Intervention on Millennium Development Goals at 130th WHO Executive Board
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Speaker: Michelle Childs, Director Policy and Advocacy, Access Campaign
Monitoring the Achievement of the health-related Millennium Development
Goals
WHO 130th Executive Board Agenda item 6.5
Intervention by Michelle Childs, Medecins Sans Frontieres
The threat caused by insufficient resources to reach the health-related
MDGs is acute. The Global Fund for example decided to uniquely cancel a
funding round meaning there will be no disbursements for scale-up of either
HIV or drug-resistant TB treatment until 2014. This represents a
three-year hiatus in new funding for scale-up.
There has been significant recent progress. Rates of annual deaths caused
by malaria and tuberculosis are falling, and nearly half of people in need
of HIV treatment have access. In a major scientific breakthrough, the
landmark HPTN 052 trial showed that early antiretroviral treatment—besides
saving lives and reducing morbidity— stops sexual transmission of the virus
by 96%. Treatment could be one of the best ways to defeat this epidemic.
But at the end of this promise-filled year, insufficient funding threatens
the gains achieved. Not only are there signs that HIV care might be
rationed, but several countries are reversing plans to implement treatment
protocols that show the best promise at getting ahead of the wave of new
infections. Scale up of MDR-TB treatment will be further delayed.
Introduction of WHO-recommended, better treatment of severe malaria with
injectable artesunate might also be postponed.
Medecins Sans Frontieres urges WHO to play a leading role in monitoring and
reporting on the health programmes at-risk from the effects of the economic
and financial crisis, and in estimating the financial gaps that remain.
We ask the Executive Board to highlight the need for Member States that
have not yet delivered on their financial pledges to the Global Fund to do
so without further delay, and to note calls for a new funding window in
2012 for countries to support treatment scale up, in particular for HIV and
DR-TB.
WHO should play a leading role in ensuring that health needs including
treatment are addressed in promising, ongoing discussions on financial
transaction taxes.
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Joanna Keenan
Press Officer
Medecins Sans Frontieres - Access Campaign
E: joanna.keenan[at]geneva.msf.org