Global Fund: AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, the whole House—and, indeed, the wider world—owes the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, a debt of gratitude, not only for this debate but for his leadership on this issue. The Global Fund is a unique and special model for development in that it is a partnership between donor Governments, civil society and the private sector. That is a very special partnership and I declare an interest, serving as I do on the global health advisory board of a major pharmaceutical company led by Sir Richard Feachem, the founder of the fund.

I seek, this evening, to draw attention to one particular aspect of that partnership in the fight against malaria that urgently needs additional resource if the momentum is to be maintained. The reality is that the funds committed to malaria are expected to peak this year at just under £2 billion. They will remain substantially lower than the resources required to achieve the global targets under the millennium development goals, which are estimated at just under £5 billion for 2010 to 2015. We will not be able to build on the real gains that have been made in combating malaria globally, and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, without added momentum being given by additional, concrete pledges to the Global Fund. The fund has been described by our own multilateral aid review as having given “very good value” to the taxpayer and,

“very high standards for financial management and audit”.

That is where the Global Fund is now, after the reforms, and we should back it. I commend the Secretary of State for International Development for the excellent work that he and the department have done in supporting development generally and healthcare in particular. However, we now have to concretise that support in terms of pledges if we are to see the gains already made consolidated.

I will make five quick points in relation to malaria. We know that interventions on it are cost-effective, saving more lives per dollar spent than interventions for most other diseases. We also know that it requires long-term financing commitment for country-implementation activities and, importantly, for research and development. From my own experience of a childhood lived under bed nets—and with ready access to drugs, because of the fortune of my parents’ financial situation—in a country which was first colonial, then newly independent, and where there was an effective public health system able to promote spraying as part of a unified response to the challenge of malaria, I know that it works. It is something where you can see real gains made and we have seen them in Swaziland, Namibia and South Africa.

In Swaziland there is a blessing: “Pula! Pula! Pula!”—let it rain, three times. Let the demonstrated largesse and compassion of the British taxpayer rain on the Global Fund.