Sunday, Global Fund Director Michel Kazatchkine announced the Fund may begin to loan cash to developing countries that no longer qualify for their grants.

A quote the recent Reuters’ piece:

“By the end of next year 10 countries from the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region — including Turkey, Kazakhstan and Russia — will no longer qualify for Global Fund grants as they will be considered upper income countries.

But some of these countries have only just built up the mechanisms to battle AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria and Kazatchkine cited Kazakhstan as an example of a country which may benefit from a loan and extended help from The Global Fund.

Former Soviet Kazakhstan in Central Asia has grown richer over the last decade from high energy and commodity prices but faces an accelerating number of people with the HIV virus.”

-Virginia Simmons

The head of the Global Fund, Michel Kazatchkine, announced major progress in the fight against malaria today. While more than one million people still die from malaria every year, mortality rates for children under 5 have been cut in half in areas of Tanzania and Eritrea in the last five years and rates have also fallen significantly in South Africa, Mozambique and Burundi.

From today’s Reuters piece:

Insecticide-treated bed nets are one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent transmission of the disease, which is caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes.

The Geneva-based Fund announced on Tuesday it had delivered 46 million insecticide-treated bed nets to families at risk of contracting malaria this year, against 18 million last year.

It was working to ensure that all African families are protected with bednets and that countries attain “universal coverage” or at least a 60 percent coverage rate after which child mortality diminishes significantly, Kazatchkine said.

Read the full article here.

-Virginia Simmons