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UNAIDS have estimated that the resources available to fight AIDS must quadruple by 2010 to achieve universal access. Without these resources, millions more will die unnecessarily, and HIV/AIDS will continue to spread.
Long-term money
As well as a significant increase in resources, we must also ensure funding is sustainable. These amounts will be needed year-on-year until we have begun to turn the epidemic around.
Developing countries need predictable funding to formulate long-term, effective responses to the epidemic.
Money now!
Most crucially this rapid expansion in resources needs to happen now. The human, social and political returns far outweigh the relatively small financial cost. And every year that we fail to respond adequately, the problem gets bigger — and more expensive. So there is a direct financial, as well as moral, imperative.
The UK’s funding for AIDS is particularly crucial. The UK led the international commitment to provide universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010. Its leadership in plugging the funding gap is crucial if other governments are to play their part.
Funding health workers and health systems
Funding treatment is about much more than just paying for drugs. Even where the drugs themselves are available many people are unable to access them.
It is estimated that by 2010, 13.7 million people will need to be receiving treatment. Huge investment in healthcare systems is needed to help extend provision further - particularly to those living away from the cities where most health facilities are based. There is also a critical shortage of the health workers needed to deliver treatment and care.
Medecins Sans Frontieres runs a number of projects delivering anti-retroviral treatment across the world, but now find their ability to expand their work is ‘stretched to the limit’ due a lack of health staff.
Poorly paid health staff work long hours under tough conditions. This makes it almost impossible to recruit new staff, and those already in post are leaving in droves.
- In Malawi, 65% of the population live below the poverty line. Most live in rural areas where the vacancy rate for nurses is 60%.
Donors claim that funding salaries is not ‘sustainable’ - but it is their funding that is not sustainable.
“When I was a nursing student I had to ask myself why am I going into nursing at all and I even considered leaving the field because I had the feeling I was just learning to move patients from the consulting rooms to the mortuaries. Now that the ARVs are here, all that has changed. I feel motivated again that there is hope. Now my problem is the shortage of staff. We are just two at this clinic.” Mpeo Kompi, 26, Nursing Sister, Lesotho, quoted in Help Wanted, Confronting the helath care worker crisis to expand access to HIV/AIDS treatment, MSF, 2007
