During its recent board meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria approved $2.4 billion for the three diseases, PlusNews reports. The money is for the fund’s “ninth round of grants, bringing the total amount of approved funding since its inception in 2001 to $18.4 billion,” according to the publication.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian health minister and chair of the Global Fund board, said, “These grants enable countries around the world to address some of the main problems they are struggling with every day” (11/13).

Global Fund Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine said, “We are seeing a tremendous demand for funding. We may not be able to continue approving such amounts of financing unless donor countries scale up their funding even further,” Reuters reports. According to the news service, in July, the Global Fund said “it was facing a budget shortfall of about $3 billion as rich countries cut foreign aid in response to the global downturn” (Malone, 11/12).

According to a Global Fund press release, “The Global Fund Board also approved a new grant architecture to simplify management of Global Fund financing” (11/12).

The China Post writes that programs financed by the Global Fund “have put 2.3 million people on treatment for HIV/AIDS, while another 5.4 million people were treated for TB and 88 million treated nets were distributed to prevent the spread of malaria” (11/13).