Radio Interview Radio Australia--Global health funding dries up amid debt woes

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Updated August 23, 2011 14:35:32

One of the world's biggest aid providers says the sovereign debt crises across North Atlantic economies are jeopardising fundraising capacity for crucial development and public health work.

The Global Fund is certainly a big player - in 2009, it provided 21 per cent of international public HIV funding and 65 per cent of international funding for both tuberculosis and malaria.

So far this year, donors have pledged almost $US12 billion but the Global Fund says this is not enough to meet millennium development goal targets relating to HIV, TB and malaria.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speaker: Dr Christophe Benn, Geneva-based director of external relations for the Global Fund