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UK pledges nearly £500m per year to fight Aids, malaria and TB around the world

Theresa May urges world leaders at the G20 summit to follow UK’s lead in pledging cash to end deadly diseases

Andrew Woodcock

Political Editor, in Osaka, Japan

Friday 28 June 2019 23:01 BST

Theresa May arrives with her husband Philip May in Osaka, where she is expected to hold bilateral talks with Vladimir Putin (EPA)

Britain is pledging almost half a billion pounds a year to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis around the world.

Announcing the funding at the G20 summit in Japan on Saturday, Theresa May will call on leaders of the world’s largest economies to step up their own efforts to tackle the deadly diseases.

The UK’s three-year pledge will see around £467m a year given to the Global Fund, which provides medication for over 3 million people living with HIV, as well as treatment and care for 2 million people with tuberculosis, and 90 million mosquito nets to prevent malaria.

The prime minister is to tell G20 leaders: “We need urgent international action and a truly collective response if we are to tackle threats to global health security, prevent infections spreading across borders, and halt the continued spread of deadly diseases.

She will ask them to “follow the UK’s lead in supporting the vital work of the Global Fund and its relentless efforts to tackle Aids, malaria and tuberculosis around the world”.

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

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1/10Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Sir Elton John and Evgeny Lebedev

The Independent has launched it's Christmas charity appeal for essential HIV testing around the world with the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Funds raised will pay for those at risk to be able to get tested, and will make sure they have access to the treatment they need. Sir Elton John and Evgeny Lebedev with their HIV test swabs at the Ponce Centre in Atlanta

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Elton John and Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams had never heard of the word HIV when he tested positive. It was his mother who had forced him to go to the doctor where he got the diagnosis that he thought was a death sentence. At that time he was in a wheelchair. It was the unbearable itching of his back that finally got him to get medical help but, he discovered, he not only had HIV but diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease. That was two years ago. This week, as the 31-year-old joined Sir Elton John and Evening Standard and The Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev in Atlanta to witness the revolutionary new breakthroughs against the disease at the city’s Grady Ponce De Leon Centre, there was no need for a wheelchair. Nor, he now knew, was there any need for fear

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Evgeny Lebedev and Andrew Williams

Within two months of starting the latest antiretroviral drugs, the virus in his body had become undetectable in his blood. Not only is he now healthy, partly due to the drugs and partly due to the healthy lifestyle adopted for his other illnesses, but he can virtually not pass the infection to other people. He feels, he says, “reborn”. “I have a reason to live,” he explained, “and that is to help people who were like me – and to show you’re going to be OK.”

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

It was a message so stark in its optimism that it reduced Sir Elton to tears. He knows first-hand the realities of what, in the past, an HIV diagnosis can mean. When he started his Elton John AIDS Foundation in the US in 1992, it was because his friends were dying and he wanted to do what he could, anything that he could, to help. “When we set up the Elton John AIDS Foundation we were delivering meals to people’s doors,” he said. “[The stigma meant] they would not go outside. We have come a long way.”

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

But part of the reason for his tears was not only happiness at Andrew’s story. It was also the knowledge that, despite all the advances that have been made, the fight is far from won – indeed, in some parts of the world, things are getting worse. Sir Elton John with everyone at the Ponce Centre in Atlanta

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

It is why he and Mr Lebedev had come to Atlanta to mark the first day of our Christmas Appeal, for that city, sadly, is one place where the situation is not only getting worse but, as those at the centre made clear, dramatically so.

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Sir Elton John with Vic Mensa at the Ponce Centre

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Sir Elton John with his HIV test swab

In Atlanta, one of America’s richest cities and the home of such international corporate giants as Coca-Cola and CNN, if you are a gay black man in 2018 then, unbelievably, you still have a one in two chance of being diagnosed as HIV positive during your lifetime.

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Elton John with the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms

Jeremy Selwyn

Independent campaign with the Elton John AIDS Foundation

Elton John talks at the Ponce Centre

Jeremy Selwyn

Ms May will say: “Not only do these diseases cause untold suffering to those who fall ill, they hold back whole countries’ development.

“I am deeply proud of the leading role the UK plays in international development and the life-saving impact of our aid spending.

“The pledge we are making today will save millions of lives and help to build a healthier and more prosperous world – and that is firmly in our national interest.”

The Global Fund says it needs to raise another £11bn at a conference in Lyon, France, in October, if it is to keep its work on track.

In 2016, Britain pledged to contribute £1.1bn over three years to the Global Fund to fight Aids, malaria and TB.

Since 2002, the fund is believed to have helped save more than 27 million lives in over 100 countries and to have reduced the number of deaths from the three diseases by more than a third.

But Aids, malaria and tuberculosis continue to claim around 2.5 million lives a year, with a child dying from malaria every two minutes.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said the UK’s pledge was “a positive step forward in the global fight against these diseases, and will help to save millions of lives”.

Sir Elton John discussed the fight against Aids with French president Emmanuel Macron as he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur last week (Getty)

And singer Sir Elton John, founder of the Elton John Aids Foundation, said: “Last week in Paris, President Macron and I called on the world to support replenishment of the Global Fund for Aids, TB and malaria. It is with profound respect that I thank the UK government for today’s historic pledge to help do just that.

“This sets an extraordinary example for others to follow.”

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