Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak this evening about a newly formed organisation called the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It is a very important new initiative in the fight against three terrible diseases which cause extraordinary suffering and very significant numbers of deaths in our region particularly, which is a matter of great interest to this organisation. I acknowledge that Senator McLucas, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing, was also present at the launch of the Pacific Friends in Sydney the week before last. It was a very impressive occasion.

Each year, the combined toll of HIV-AIDS, TB and malaria is around five million people worldwide. The poorest people in the poorest communities are the worst affected, and children in particular suffer as victims of disease or as the orphans left when their parents die. The statistics for each disease are beyond alarming. It is estimated that, in relation to HIV-AIDS, 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, 95 per cent of whom live in developing countries. In 2007, approximately 2½ million people were newly infected with the virus. In the same year, more than two million people died of AIDS related causes. Indeed, HIV-AIDS has killed more than 25 million people world wide. AIDS is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa and the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide. Since just 2005, the number of women and girls infected with HIV has increased in every region of the world, with rates rising more rapidly in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. In fact, women and girls account for 50 per cent of all people living with HIV worldwide and 61 per cent of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa. The estimated number of children living with HIV increased from 1½ million in 2001 to 2½ million in 2007. Almost 90 per cent of all HIV-positive children live in sub-Saharan Africa. Globally, over 15 million children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS. It is estimated that per capita growth in half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa is falling by 0.5 per cent to 1.2 per cent each year as a direct result of the impact of AIDS.

In relation to TB, more than 2 billion people—that is, one third of the world’s population—are infected, over 90 per cent of them in developing countries. Globally, 1.7 million deaths from TB occurred in 2006. Due to a combination of economic decline, the breakdown of health systems, the insufficient application of TB control measures, the spread of HIV-AIDS and the emergence of multidrug-resistant TB, the rate of TB infection is not declining in many developing countries. Unfortunately, HIV and tuberculosis form an absolutely lethal combination, each speeding the other’s progress. In 2006, more than 700,000 people living with HIV were infected with TB and 200,000 HIV-positive people died from TB. In 2007, the African, South-East Asian and western Pacific regions accounted for 83 per cent of total TB cases. The vast majority of deaths are in the developing world, with more than half of all deaths occurring in Asia. More than 75 per cent of TB related disease and death occurs amongst relatively young people—those between the ages of 15 and 54—which is also the most economically active segment of the population. TB is consequently estimated to deplete the incomes of the world’s poorest communities by a total of US$12 billion.

Finally, the third disease which the global fund addresses is malaria. Each year, malaria causes nearly one million deaths, mostly among children under five years of age, and an additional 189 million to 327 million clinical cases, the majority of which occur in the world’s poorest countries. Almost half the world’s population—3.3 billion people—is at risk of malaria, and the proportion increases yearly due to deteriorating health systems, growing drug and insecticide resistance, climate change and, of course, war. In 2006, 86 per cent of malaria cases occurred in Africa. Each day, approximately 2,200 Africans die from malaria; 85 per cent are children under five years of age. Of those cases that occurred outside Africa, 80 per cent were in India, Sudan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Pakistan. It is rural and poor populations which carry the overwhelming burden of malaria, because access to effective treatment, which is so simple, is extremely limited. Malaria has been estimated to cost Africa more than US$12 billion every year in lost GDP, even though it could be controlled for a fraction of that sum.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established in 2002 as a unique, global public-private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV-AIDS, TB and malaria. It was developed after the action of the United Nations and, in particular, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called for the creation of a global fund to channel additional resources to fight those three diseases. The UN General Assembly committed to it and, soon after, the G8 endorsed and helped finance it. It was launched in 2002, and the first round of grants was then approved to 36 countries. Since then, the global fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight these three diseases. In fact, it has committed more than $15 billion in 140 countries for prevention, treatment and care programs. It is designed to be a new and better approach to international health funding. It is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities. It works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organisations, supporting their work through substantially increased funding.

The fund is guided by seven important principles, which I would like to briefly enunciate: to operate as a financial instrument, not an implementing entity; to make available and leverage additional financial resources, as I have said; to support programs that actually evolve from national plans and priorities; to operate in a balanced manner in terms of different regions, diseases and interventions; to pursue an integrated and balanced approach to prevention and treatment; to evaluate proposals through independent review processes; and to operate with transparency and accountability. In all its work, the global fund seeks to ensure the effectiveness of its financial aid, modelled closely on the principles of the Paris declaration. These principles are helping the global fund to achieve its vision. It is a pretty simple vision, but a pretty compelling one: a vision of a world free of the burden of HIV-AIDS, TB and malaria.

As part of this collective effort of the global fund, a new initiative was launched on 23 February this year: the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It is the seventh friends group of the global fund around the world. It is an advocacy organisation in its own way, founded to create awareness of the global fund and its work across the Pacific region. It aims to build very important political and financial support for the fund’s fight against the three diseases, to mobilise regional awareness of the threat posed by these three pandemics to societies and, importantly, to economies in the region and to mobilise support for the global fund in its vital role resourcing effective country based plans to reduce the impact and spread of the diseases.

The global fund benefits very much from the work of the friends organisations, and this one hopefully will be no exception. It is chaired by Wendy McCarthy and includes amongst its number Andrew Forrest, the Rt Hon. Helen Clark, Professor Tony Cunningham from Westmead Hospital, the Hon. Michael Kirby, Dr Nafsiah Mboi from the Indonesia National AIDS Commission and Sir Peter Barter, the former health minister of Papua New Guinea, to name just a few. It is a group of very determined people who are committed to ensuring that it does an effective job in its advocacy. I am very honoured and very pleased to have been invited to join this group as one of the inaugural Pacific Friends of the Global Fund.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Congratulations.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. It would not have been possible without the support of the Lowy Institute for International Policy or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The support of the foundation in particular is beyond invaluable; it is almost incalculable. The Pacific Friends is based at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. Its inaugural executive director is Bill Bowtell, known to many of us in this parliament. He is also the Director of the HIV-AIDS Project at the Lowy Institute. I know Bill, I know his commitment and I know he will do an outstanding job. The work of the fund is in all of our interests and worthy of our strong support. It is a very important regional initiative and one of which I am delighted to be a part. I thank the inaugurators of the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund for that opportunity.