BERLIN (AFP) — The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria began its biggest ever financing drive here on Wednesday in a bid to raise eight billion dollars (5.6 billion euros) to combat the three killer diseases.
Germany kicked off the donor conference in Berlin by pledging 600 million euros to the cash-strapped fund over the next three years to fight the diseases which claim up to six million lives a year.
Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul announced that Germany would also write off 50 million euros of Indonesia's bilateral debt on condition that Jakarta plough half that sum into programmes run by the Global Fund.
"This will allow Indonesia to put 25 million euros into urgently required measures to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria," she said.
The minister urged other wealthy nations to help poorer ones in the same way by joining the fund's new Debt2Health initiative.
"For the first time we have debt relief linked directly to the promotion of health care. Combatting global poverty is a responsibility. In many countries poverty means an early death," she said.
"We have to succeed in breaking this vicious circle. I hope more countries will join us."
The executive director of the Global Fund, Michel Kazatchkine, said talks were underway to write off debt owed by Kenya, Peru and Pakistan.
Kazatschkine said the conference was the "largest ever" health financing exercise in the world and came at a "critical time" in the race against time to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goals of slashing poverty and major diseases like HIV/AIDS by 2015.
"All UN countries have pledged to come as close as possible to the goals. This conference is a key opportunity for donors to engage until 2010," he said.
The Global Fund -- which relies on donations from states, foundations and big business -- says that it needs between 12 and 18 billion dollars to fund its existing programmes and initiate new ones between 2008 and 2010.
It wants to collect pledges of seven to eight billion dollars from around 30 donors attending the three-day meeting in Berlin.
The run-up to the event saw a dire warning from UNAIDS about a lack of resources and pressure from rock star and anti-poverty campaigner Bono on the Group of Eight rich nations to reach for their chequebooks.
"When something works this well it deserves to be scaled up -- aggressively," Bono said in a statement from his Africa advocacy group DATA.
DATA said the G8 must go beyond a pledge made at its June summit in Germany to give 60 billion dollars over the next few years to fight AIDS.
In a report released in Geneva, UNAIDS said global funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment must be more than quadrupled over the next three years to 42.2 billion dollars to stop the pandemic worsening.
The UN agency said if money came in at the current pace, funding from public and private sources will reach about 15.4 billion dollars in 2010 and fall further behind the growth of the disease.
"A failure to move beyond the limited successes achieved to date will only cause the epidemic to worsen," it warned.
On the eve of the Berlin meeting, Britain announced that it would spend a billion pounds to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria through the Global Fund over the next eight years.
The Global Fund was set up five years ago at the instigation of then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan and has so far spent some seven billion dollars in grants for 450 programmes in 136 different countries.
It claims to have saved two million lives by giving medicine to AIDS and tuberculosis sufferers and distributing mosquito nets in malaria-infested areas.
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