Current International Focus on AIDS Funding Could ‘Eclipse’ Other Development Goals, Lancet Editorial Says
"Maybe it is time to accept that AIDS is a special case and as such should have a single, separate fund," a Lancet editorial states, noting that focusing international resources from various sources on HIV/AIDS projects risks "eclipsing the poverty-related health issues that needed to be tackled long before AIDS appeared." The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established last year, in part to pool international funds for HIV/AIDS efforts. Although there is "no 'magic bullet'" to fight HIV/AIDS, "it was clear" at the close of the XIV International AIDS Conference last week "that there is something akin to a magic bullet -- money," the Lancet states. However, efforts to fight HIV may compete with other public health strategies if the disease is not given its own funding mechanism, the editorial says, adding that "[s]ectioning off AIDS would allow another fund -- a truly Global fund -- to finance all other health-related aspects" related to poverty relief and development (Lancet, 7/20).
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