Disease busters going bust

World attention has been trained on the Occupy movement, which has challenged the "1 percent" of the global population that exercises disproportionate influence on economic and social policy. But this week, many activists from the developing world - the greatest beneficiaries of the Global Fund - will be focused on efforts to keep the institution viable as it passes the ten-year mark.

When the Global Fund began operations in 2002, it was heralded as an innovative new institution - an organisation driven by the idea that people need not die of preventable and treatable diseases simply because they are poor.
Indeed, many thought of the Fund as an activist entity, because it focused on three devastating epidemics that have a common denominator: economic and social inequality.