Global Health Funding Faces a Shortfall of Billions to Fight Diseases

The global health community has tools to prevent and treat diseases, however, a “decline in global health funding threatens not just to stymie scientific advances against diseases like HIV, but to actually reverse gains made in the past decade,” writes Andrew Green for World Politics Review. Research on diseases has contributed to the largest population of young people in the planet’s history, notes the United Nations, but many live in areas with inadequate health care. International donor funding for health care is declining, and analysts suggest that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria deliberately set low funding targets to avoid frightening donors. “In the face of the funding shortfall, the international community has called on the governments most affected by these epidemics to invest more in alleviating them,” Green reports. Meanwhile, new diseases like Ebola and Zika emerge as well as the challenge of anti-microbial resistance. Heads of state attending the UN General Assembly have concluded that combating disease requires “adequate, predictable and sustained funding.” – YaleGlobal