Dow Jones joins forces with the Global Fund against HIV/AIDS


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The Dow Jones Indexes and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, announced their partnership through the creation of a new index; the Dow Jones Global Fund 50 Index. The agreement, signed Thursday at the “Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development” in Paris, will enable the Global Fund, already present in Africa, to raise funds from private companies and help establish new humanitarian projects.

The oldest stock index in New York, the Dow Jones Indexes and the Global Fund to fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced their partnership at the “Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development” in Paris on Thursday.

The partnership was finalized with an agreement that seeks to launch a new “solidarity” index; the Dow Jones Global Index Fund 50.

The plan is simple: To create an index of 50 companies with a, direct or indirect, connection to health and who wish to invest in the Global Fund’s humanitarian projects.

The strategy will be an opportunity for the Global Fund to diversify its traditional public funding, and investor companies will be part of commercially viable projects while contributing to humanitarian actions.

A promising partnership

The Global Fund, a financial institution created in 2002, is very present in Africa. The organisation is the leader in the fight against AIDS, the leading cause of mortality among African women, tuberculosis and malaria.

But “to continue” giving this crucial support, the Global Fund “needs more money”, and this money can be found in the private sector, suggests Robert Filipp, Head of Innovative Financing Fund.

Health file  The lack of education and political will, poverty, out-moded traditional beliefs, to mention but a few, have been widely blamed for causing severe and sometimes unwarranted health catastrophies of genocidal proportions on the African continent. Child killer diseases, malaria, tuberculosis, water borne diseases, HIV/AIDS, among other preventable ailments have killed millions in their wake. As rightly said by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, on May 13, 2000 "More people (...) died of Aids in the past year (1999-2000, ndlr) in Africa than in all the wars on the continent".
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