Kazatchkine To Start as New Global Fund Director
Michel Kazatchkine, France's former global ambassador for HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases, on Monday will take over as the new executive director of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Boston Globe reports (Donnelly, Boston Globe, 4/22). The Global Fund in February announced that the organization's board had selected Kazatchkine to replace former Executive Director Richard Feachem, whose contract ended in March (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 2/9). As the Global Fund executive director, Kazatchkine will lead a financing organization that has committed $7.1 billion over five years, including $1.9 billion from the U.S., to 136 countries. Kazatchkine said his early goals including quadrupling donations to the Global Fund to $8 million annually by 2010; developing stronger ties with other organizations working against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria; and committing to "full accountability and transparency" of Global Fund operations. According to the Globe, the Global Fund is "trying to address the difficult question of how to sustain the work for decades to come." Kazatchkine said that the Global Fund still is "in an emergency response" to the three diseases and that the organization needs to "start building (each) country's ownership" of Global Fund programs. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that Kazatchkine also should work to better define the Global Fund's mission (Boston Globe, 4/22).
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