Top > Announcement > Press Releases (Statements) > Prime Minister Koizumi Pledges "US$ 500 Million for the Coming Years" to the Global Fund, Reiterates US$ 5 Billion Pledge over 5 Years for Health in ODA

Prime Minister Koizumi Pledges "US$ 500 Million for the Coming Years" to the Global Fund, Reiterates US$ 5 Billion Pledge over 5 Years for Health in ODA

June 30, 2005

  1. Ahead of the G8 summit meeting scheduled next week in Gleneagles, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced that Japan would "contribute half a billion dollars in the coming years" to the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), at a symposium held in Tokyo commemorating the 5th year since the conception of the GFATM at the G8 Kyushu-Okinawa summit in 2000.
  2. Prime Minister Koizumi said "we cannot tolerate a situation in which one person is killed every five seconds somewhere in the world by these three killer diseases". Mr. Koizumi mentioned a forecast, made by UNAIDS, that the number of people infected with the HIV virus in the whole of Asia might increase to fifty million by 2010.
  3. Referring to the words of Louis Pasteur, the French microbiologist, "Fortune smiles upon the prepared", Prime Minister Koizumi said that Japan is determined to continue international cooperation aimed at poverty reduction and protection of health in the developing countries, so that "fortune also smiles upon those who are yet unable to prepare by themselves".
  4. In his address, Prime Minister Koizumi stated that Japan would provide comprehensive assistance amounting to US$ 5 billion over the next five years from 2005 to improve health in the developing countries, based on the "Health and Development Initiative", reiterating his announcement made in the presence of African ambassadors in Tokyo on 28 June 2005.
  5. The symposium was co-hosted by Friends of the Global Fund/Japan, a cross-sector supporting group, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the GFATM, to consider East Asia's regional response to the three epidemics. Among the main speakers were Professor Richard Feachem, Executive Director of the GFATM, Mr. Tommy Thompson, Chair Emeritus of the Board of the GFATM and Mr. Yoshiro Mori, former Prime Minister and President of the Friends of the Global Fund/Japan.
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