Hi,

In this comprehensive edition, we bring you perspectives from Peter Sands, Global Fund’s Executive Director, who offered glimpses on the multiple challenges in addressing AIDS, TB and Malaria in this epochal year of cuts in development assistance, and debilitating geopolitics.

Sands spoke last month to reporters in Geneva, and today we share the full-length of his interaction with the press in the run up to the Fund’s eighth round of replenishment later this year.

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Priti

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I. STORY OF THE WEEK

The Global Fund Briefing: The Impact of the Funding Cuts on the Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria

By Priti Patnaik & Bianca Carvalho

The Global Fund holds sway over governments and funders, in a way few other agencies do.

In this meltdown year for global health, when the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria, have faced their biggest challenge in recent years, the role of the Global Fund becomes even more strategic. Last week, Germany pledged €1 billion at the World Health Summit to the Fund’s Eighth Round of Replenishment. In the latest financing efforts, the organization is seeking to raise US $ 18 billion in order to save 23 million lives between 2027 and 2029.

Already, Australia, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, and some private sector actors have reportedly pledged to the Fund.

The relative importance of the Fund in the scheme of the overall architecture for global health will also likely increase. The budgetary crisis at the WHO is eating the organization inside out. Another global health agency, Gavi - The Vaccine Alliance, is at the cusp of a transition with calls for greater efficiency and rationalization in its operations. Overall, global health mandates are straining not only financially, but also in the wider context of political disinformation fueling attacks on the immunization agenda and in fact, science itself.

Last month, Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Fund fielded questions from reporters on a range of issues, including on the difficult choices that global health agencies are making in a year of opportunistic geopolitics and scant resources. He also spoke of the promise of lencapavair (a preventive drug for HIV) and on the specificity of the fight against malaria.

The press briefing for Geneva-based journalists was held on September 10, 2025, organized by the Association of Accredited Correspondents at the United Nations (ACANU).

We have presented the interventions from Sands verbatim, and by theme, and have only lightly edited for length and to improve readability. The discussion reflects questions raised by Geneva Health Files alongside other news organizations.