Thursday, August 10, 2006

Gates Foundation donates $500 million to AIDS

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest charitable foundation, endowed by Bill Gates, chairman and founder of Microsoft, and his wife, Melinda Gates. The foundation is donating $500 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria over the next five years.

The contribution is by far the largest from a nongovernment source since the Global Fund was created in 2002.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria holds the nations and organizations it assists to high performance standards — an approach the Gates Foundation advocates in all its giving.

The Geneva-based Global Fund pulled the plug on programs in Uganda, Ukraine and Nigeria when it discovered money was being misused or progress was trifling.

That hard-nosed attitude has led to significant gains in the number of poor people around the globe who are sharing in medical advances that long ago eased the burden of disease in developed nations, the Global Fund's executive director, Richard Feachem, said Wednesday in announcing the donation.

Countries and their institutions seeking financial assistance should be held accountable for the funds provided to them. Providing the poor and the needy with tools and knowledge and the incentives for them to work and improve their lives is the solution to bring them out of the trap of poverty.

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