Australia pushed on AIDS funding

As the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC draws to a close, Executive Director of Pacific Friends, Bill Bowtell spoke to Nancy Notzon on ABC Radio AM to discuss the future of Australia’s response to HIV & AIDS — both domestically and internationally.

ABC Radio AM Transcript

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Australia is being urged to double its financial contribution to the global fight against HIV/AIDS.

A leading advocacy group called the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund says enormous gains have been made in the fight against AIDS, with the number of deaths and new infections falling.

But the group’s executive director, Bill Bowtell, says the Global Financial Crisis is threatening billions of dollars in AIDS research funds.

He’s told Nancy Notzon, that it’s time for countries like Australia to make up the shortfall.

BILL BOWTELL: The problem that looks serious is the problem in Europe and in America where we have real pressures on development budgets and therefore the amounts of money that are needed to put more people on treatment and to get on top of this epidemic are really – it’s a real matter of concern.

But we have to get on top of it, we have to get more people on treatment and we have to find ways around this, what we hope is a temporary budget problem in Europe.

NANCY NOTZON: Now is this pressure on government budgets that would be donating to countries or to HIV research or is it also from private donors?

BILL BOWTELL: No the big donors have been governments, and particularly the European governments. France and Italy, Spain, the European Union and so on have been very generous donors to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, but they are in trouble and therefore their ability to fund this response is declining.

Now what that really means is that countries in Asia, countries like Australia, countries in the Middle East that are doing well, that are doing well and that have robust economies, really have to step up to the plate and assume some responsibility for funding the international response to HIV and AIDS.

NANCY NOTZON: How much money would you say you’ve lost with the lack of donors?

BILL BOWTELL: Well I think in the last few years several billion dollars, the equivalent of several billion American dollars have been under threat. And this really has to be made good in the next year or so when the Global Fund goes to the donors to support the ability to put antiretroviral therapies and pills in the mouths of the people who need them around the world in the poorest countries in the world.

NANCY NOTZON: What will it mean if this work can’t continue? What will it mean in terms of the epidemic?

BILL BOWTELL: It will mean that more people will die. At the moment about 8 million people in the world are receiving antiretroviral therapies, which is the difference between life and death. But there’s another 8 million or so who don’t receive anything at all. And those people face a very painful and grim short life, because we do not fund them to get the antiretroviral therapies that would save their lives.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Bill Bowtell, executive director of Pacific Friends of the Global Fund speaking there to Nancy Notzon.