Funding information

© UNICEF/HQ05-0864/Noorani

Across the globe, millions of children have been orphaned by HIV and AIDS. More than 2 million children are HIV-positive and approximately 290,000 children under 15 died in 2007 of AIDS-related causes. Millions more have been made vulnerable by the disease, as HIV and AIDS both thrives on and exacerbates other challenges, including poverty, armed conflict, ignorance and gender discrimination, and is rolling back decades of progress in child survival in several countries.

In view of the gap between resources and needs, a range of innovative approaches to financing development assistance has been implemented in the last few years. In health, innovative public-private partnership initiatives are under way in the form of the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Stop TB Partnership and Roll Back Malaria.

However, the bulk of resources for these initiatives still comes from traditional sources: donor country governments as represented in the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank. The primary vehicle for in-country projects remains official development assistance. For these reasons, trends in ODA should be a reasonable measure of global priorities.

Funding for AIDS globally includes bilateral and multilateral support from donor governments, multilateral organizations, the private sector (corporations, foundations, NGOs and individuals) and domestic funding by the governments of countries that receive aid.