ABSTRACT
Donor governments provide the bulk of the money that funds HIV/ AIDS prevention, treatment, and care programs in low-and middleincome countries today. The main donor governments are the members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which includes the G7 group of rich industrialized countries. Financing of the global HIV/AIDS response is mainly through donor contributions to relevant multilateral institutions such as UNAIDS, the Global Fund, and WHO, as well as by direct bilateral transfers to recipient governments and national or regional institutions. In the early years of the epidemic, none of the wealthy nations funded HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries directly through bilateral aid programs. In the absence of a clear funding strategy and guidelines from the UN at the time, donor governments were uncertain about how to proceed and chose instead to direct funds for HIV/AIDS through the multilateral channels.1
