Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the speeches that we just heard, which set out clearly the need for action to ensure the delivery of sustainable development goal target 3.3 to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We need the political will to do so, and we are already beginning to see it in this Chamber.

The fund does not implement programmes but raises and invests $4 billion a year to support programmes run by local experts in communities most in need. Countries therefore take the lead in deciding where and how best to fight disease, as well as how to work with international partners. That enhances countries’ ownership and, as the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) ably sketched, it increases domestic resource mobilisation through counterpart financing, which is important. I saw for myself on a visit to Cambodia with Results UK how our leadership, through the Global Fund, empowers directors in the countries by allowing them to sort things out themselves. It is a powerful model.

Using a country’s health and wealth to determine funding is indicative of the Global Fund’s model. It sees health as key to improving economies, and as a country’s wealth increases, its reliance on international support should decrease. With that in mind, the UK Government should press the Global Fund board, of which the UK is a member, to introduce a transition strategy to ensure that, when recipient countries move away from the Global Fund, they are still supported sustainably. For example, statistics show that 94% of gene expert diagnostics for TB and two thirds of second-line TB drugs within the World Health Organisation Europe region are provided through the Global Fund. It is imperative that those recipients continue to receive Global Fund support so that people who fall ill have access to diagnosis and treatment.

In short, the Global Fund should remain global, and support should be provided to middle-income countries to transition sustainably. Successive UK Governments have supported the Global Fund, and we can all be extremely proud of that, but the UK kept its contribution during the last replenishment in 2013, hoping that others would respond to the challenge of meeting the target. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs that that does not appear to have worked as a strategy, so I hope the UK Government will revisit and reconsider it.

The rationale given for the cap was that it would incentivise others to donate. Ahead of the replenishment, have the Government conducted any assessment of whether it has done so? It has been suggested that the cap has served only to limit our own contribution. The UK Government should commit to that important global initiative, on which so many people’s lives rely. That is clear and unambiguous. The Government should take steps other than a cap to ensure contributions by other donors. The UK should maintain its leadership role, continue to show strong support for the Global Fund and push for the $13 billion ask to be met by making its own substantial contribution, leveraging other donors to invest and expanding the donor base. By doing so, the Minister and his colleagues will show the word leadership that we have shown in the past and match it, which is something of which we can all be proud.