The Global Network of People living with HIV received news of the resignation of Prof. Michel Kazatchkine as Executive Director to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria with regret, but are keen to express our gratitude and respect for his leadership and commitment to the principles of the Global Fund over the past ten years.

Prof. Kazatchkine has played a pivotal role in the establishment and development of the Global Fund, having served on the Fund’s Transitional Working Group, Technical Review Panel and its Board before becoming Executive Director in 2007.

Under Prof. Kazatchkine’s leadership the Global Fund has lived up to its commitment of being a responsible and transparent multi-stakeholder funding agency based on a country ownership model, and a governance structure which promotes the active and meaningful participation of governments, the private sector, civil society, and most notably communities living with HIV, TB and Malaria.

Raising resources and managing grants, the Global Fund has saved millions of lives of people receiving treatment and prevention services over the past years. Today the Global Fund is hailed as one of the most transparent donor mechanisms.

The Global Network of People living with HIV expresses great thanks to Prof. Kazatchkine for his leadership towards the realization of the Global Fund’s mission and vision, which is ultimately about the people behind the numbers.

The Global Network of People living with HIV continues to support the Global Fund’s Consolidated Transformation Plan to be implemented by the new General Manager as agreed by the Global Fund Board. It is critical that during this transformation the Global Fund safeguards its unique structure with its multi stakeholder approach. The transformation should be an inspiration to achieve new strides in scaling up treatment and prevention of HIV, TB and malaria.

The Global Network of People living with HIV is looking towards the Global Fund leadership to ensure the global response to HIV, TB and malaria is resourced and supported well into the future.

The Global Fund contributed significantly to the great gains made through the global efforts against HIV, TB and malaria. Not to scale up now will risk the progress made over the past decade and will increase the human and economic costs of the three diseases in the future. At the opening of the ICASA conference in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, UNAIDS Executive Director Michél Sidibé strikingly described the reality: “If we do not pay now, we will pay forever.”

To this end, the Global Network of People living with HIV calls on donor countries to continue to fund and support the leadership of the Global Fund and on recipient countries to scale up appropriate human rights based health care approaches to meet the needs of people living with and affected by  HIV, TB and malaria.