Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

As the noble Lord knows, the two things go closely together. I will have to look carefully at what his question implied. Of course, both the global fund and DfID are well aware of that interrelationship. Where you have patients suffering from TB, especially when it is multidrug resistant TB, you often have HIV going alongside, so the two are being tackled together. I will need to look at the noble Lord’s question to see whether there is something in it that I did not understand.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, about the enormous benefits that the global fund has brought to international health and its commitment to transparency and to dealing with these issues when they arise. I declare my interest in malaria and neglected tropical diseases. Will Her Majesty’s Government encourage the global fund to look at partnership working and integrating programmes, particularly on maternal and child health and neglected tropical diseases, as part of the post-2015 commitment to strengthening health systems and doing that from the bottom up rather than the top down?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. The global fund has had an effect across all those areas and I pay tribute to her work on neglected tropical diseases. DfID has been strongly supportive of that. There are a number of areas where obviously the work of the global fund is complementary. If you look at its aim to raise $15 billion, at the moment $37 billion across this whole area is coming from the developing countries, supporting the kind of work that the noble Baroness is talking about.