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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this week announced a contribution of US$500 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The money, to be given over five years, was the largest private donation to the Fund since it was founded nearly five years ago.
Global Fund Executive Director Richard Feachem welcomed the pledge as a "generous and timely intervention", but expressed concern over remaining funding gaps.
"Even with this support, it is likely that we will need an additional $500 million to reach our goal of $1.1 billion to cover all of the grants that we expect to approve for our sixth round of funding," he said in a recent statement.
The Geneva-based Fund, which prides itself on holding recipient countries accountable for monies received, supported about a fifth of all AIDS programmes in 2005.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions