The executive director of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Peter Sands said that the next hurdle that one needs to overcome to dramatically reduce spread of HIV is gender inequality. The fund hopes to raise $14 billion to tackle the world's deadliest infectious diseases, reported Bloomberg.
According to Sands, an increasing proportion of the money that is available to fight HIV infections should be spent on prevention, rather than treatment and testing. He further added that about 1,000 young women, mostly from east and southern Africa, are infected with the virus every day from sexual violence, education disadvantages and economic inequality.
Sand was speaking during an interview at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town.
According to The Global Fund website, the organisation aims at "Accelerating the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics." It further reads, "The Global Fund partnership mobilizes and invests more than US$4 billion a year to support programs run by local experts in more than 100 countries."
While the rate of infection worldwide has halved over the last decade, the number of young women who are still being affected is concerning, according to Sands. He further pointed out that there are high incidences of infection in groups that face discrimination in accessing health care like gay men, transgender individuals and refugees.
Created in 2002 at the initiative of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan, The Global Fund aims towards ending AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis by 2030, the report reads.
The Bloomberg report further revealed that a fund typically raises and spends money in three-year cycles and aims to raise $14 billion at a replenishment conference on October 10 that will be hosted by France's President Emmanuel Macron.
According to Sands, that is 15 percent more than what they had raised in 2016.
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