Global Fund and Huffington Post make Big Push for global health goals

New York, 24 September 2012 - The Global Fund, in partnership with the Huffington Post, launched ‘The Big Push’ digital campaign on Monday to help maintain momentum toward three global health goals: no child born with HIV, no deaths from mosquito bites, tuberculosis (TB) treatment for all.

“We have never been so close to achieving once unthinkable goals in global health,” said The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as the campaign officially went live at the Mashable Social Good Summit in New York.

“The Big Push shines a light on the success story of the past 12 years and galvanises the world’s support for achieving health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and beyond.”

Significant progress

The Global Fund’s mission to prevent and end deaths from AIDS, malaria and TB has made significant progress in the past decade.

Since 2000, malaria infections have declined by 50 percent in a dozen African countries; some 6.2 million people are now receiving antiretroviral therapy in sub-Saharan Africa compared with 100,000 in 2003; efforts to meet the MDG of halving TB cases and deaths by 2015 are on track.

Online wall

To help raise awareness of ‘The Big Push’, the Huffington Post will host an online wall of portraits showing celebrities, politicians, members of the public holding-up messages of support for the fight against the three diseases.

Early supporters include Chelsea Clinton, Bono, Bill Gates, Charlize Theron, Jeffrey Sachs and Desmond Tutu. Anyone can create and submit a self-portrait to the wall which will show their name and hometown.

Big News

The Huffington Post will also create a Big News Page highlighting news on the three diseases, blog posts and the latest tweets.

With New York hosting the UN General Assembly this week, The Big Push will also use electronic billboards in Manhattan to alert global leaders to the new campaign.