Today, Aileen Carroll will announce a $250 million to the Global Fund set up to prevent the spread of contagious diseases in Africa (and potentially to support health infrastructure buildup as well). Full credit to the Libs for a worthy investment. But as always, it's not quite that simple.
The new investment brings up the question of why money to fight AIDS is seemingly being shuffled around randomly. After all, nothing in the article suggests that Ottawa will reinstate funding for clinical trials of vaccines which were already developed by the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, despite public pressure from Stephen Lewis. And surely the word of the UN Secretary General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa has to be worth something in figuring out which policies need to be pursued.
More investment in AIDS prevention is a plus. But no progress will be made, either in vaccine development at home or in infrastructure development abroad, unless funding is stable enough to ensure that long-term projects can be carried out. And on that score, Ottawa's unexplained change in focus can't leave anybody confident of how much support they'll receive in the future.
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