Money woes hobble anti-AIDS groups

Private organizations committed to HIV/AIDS control are heading into another cold winter without the support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which pulled out of China in 2011.

From 2002 until then, the biggest international fund ever in health had given China grants totaling $804 million, but it left four years ago because the World Bank reclassified it as an upper-middle-income country.

The Global Fund had required involvement of private organizations, "thus its departure has substantially affected those organizations and even the HIV intervention efforts in general," said Cheng Xiang, director of Beijing Ren'ai Group, which is committed to HIV prevention among gay people.