You report that the UK has shortsightedly reduced funding for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and looks to be continuing its abandonment of its earlier strong leadership in global development (UK cuts contribution to Aids, tuberculosis and malaria fund by £150m, 11 November).
The fund has an impressive track record, with 70 million lives saved since 2022. However, much more needs to be done to build regional capacity for medicine and vaccine production, improve the accessibility, effectiveness and robustness of indigenous health systems, and scale up proven prevention initiatives aimed at reducing future pandemics, illness and death. These are the very actions that will be sacrificed to protect the ongoing purchase of life-saving commodities.
For example, the fund’s current strategy stresses the importance of improving indoor air quality to avert the spread of known pathogens such as those causing tuberculosis, flu and Covid, and to build resilience against future pandemic pathogens. However, I can see no targets, indicators, budgets or activities aimed at addressing this urgent need among the fund’s own monitoring tools.
The need to build strong health systems, as well as capacity for localised production of pharmaceutical and medical technology, to shift away from dependence on the fickle largesse of wealthier nations, was very well laid out in the recent Guardian long read by Mara Kardas-Nelson on her experience in Sierra Leone and elsewhere (‘They take the money and go’: why not everyone is mourning the end of USAID, 4 November).
Our leaders’ vision for global health and pandemic prevention needs to look beyond the illusion of short-term savings and scale up effective, accessible treatment and prevention to protect us all.
Desmond Whyms
Former health adviser, Department for International Development
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