Barefoot flight from Mosul: The long road to safety

11 March 2017    3395 visit
A thin, dark column of figures winds across the barren hills on the outskirts of west Mosul, through clouds of dust thrown up by mortars falling around them. With wide, fearful eyes in faces drawn from months of malnutrition, some stagger out of exhaustion or hobble in broken plastic sandals. Others walk barefoot. Many women carry young children or are heavily pregnant. Aged grandparents are...

Saving Lives, Changing Livelihoods through Innovative Financing

05 March 2017    3348 visit
By Mark Dybul, Executive Director Tackling today’s global challenges calls for new and diverse approaches. As a 21st century partnership, the Global Fund is constantly exploring innovative financing models to go beyond traditional sources of funding to reach the global goal of ending the epidemics of AIDS, TB and malaria by 2030. The Lives and Livelihoods Fund is a good example of how new...

Early insights from the first field test of universal basic income

28 February 2017    3141 visit
Since October 2016, each of 95 adults in a rural village in Western Kenya has received 2,280 shillings, about $22, every month from Silicon Valley-based nonprofit GiveDirectly. They’ll get that money for the next 12 years, regardless of what else happens in their lives. The pilot project is among the first field tests of universal basic income — the idea of providing everyone with a base...

Evidence on abstinence and fidelity for HIV Prevention

18 February 2017    3397 visit
Sex has regularly proven to be a polarising issue for the UN Member States, and the 2016 High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS on June 8–10 was no exception. The Political Declaration adopted at the meeting addresses the sexual health needs of young people (15–24 years), including adolescents (11–19 years).1 2000 new HIV infections occur among young people every day. HIV is the leading cause of...

Thriving

15 February 2017    3754 visit
Birrzaf Mesele remembers how it was more than 10 years ago, when she learned she was HIV-positive. Like most people in Mekelle, northern Ethiopia, she had no access to treatment. Then, people who tested positive for HIV would go home and wait to die. But when treatment finally arrived, Birrzaf could not bring herself to start it. She stayed home. She did not want people to see her collect HIV...

2016 highlights according to GF staffs

24 December 2016    3406 visit
Colleagues at the Global Fund offer personal reflections on some of the highlights of 2016.    “My highlight of 2016 is WHO recommending a shorter treatment regimen for multidrug-resistant TB. The Global Fund supported pilot projects to validate the effectiveness of this new regimen, especially in West and Central Africa. Not only does it reduce the length of treatment by half for many...

Learning From Ebola to Fight Malaria

19 December 2016    3393 visit
A year after Sierra Leone was declared free of the Ebola virus, this small country in West Africa is struggling to rebuild its health system. Malaria remains the most common cause of illness and death, accounting for more than 40 percent of outpatient morbidity and 38 percent of deaths among children under five. Malaria alone killed twice as many people in 2014 than the Ebola outbreak. But...

Sex for fish

05 December 2016    3578 visit
With a furrowed brow, Elizabeth Masere faced the camera and told the story of her life matter-of-factly. She spoke of the tough job of trying to raise her six children by selling fish at the shores of Lake Victoria – East Africa’s largest lake. She told about the men who controlled fishing and who exploited women for sex. As hard as money was to come by, having it did not guarantee she...