The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria “said on Thursday it needs $15 billion over the next three years to begin bringing ‘the three big global pandemics’ under control,” Reuters reports. “In a report released ahead of a pledging conference later this year, the [Global Fund] said timely investments could avert $47 billion in extra treatment costs and save millions of lives, but warned that acting too late would mean missing important opportunities,” the news service notes. “If international donors fail to stump up the at least $15 billion needed, [Global Fund Executive Director Mark Dybul] said this could lead to millions of avoidable cases of HIV during the funding period of 2014 to 2016,” the news service continues (Kelland, 9/12). “In addition, three million less people would be treated for TB and one million unnecessarily killed without treatment,” the U.N. News Centre writes, noting, “The report points to the cost of $30 per patient to start TB treatment, which can rise to 1,000 times the cost for multi-drug resistant TB in the future.” The news service adds, “The report also notes that the consequences for inadequate funding for malaria would be 196,000 lives lost per year and 430 million instances of people having malaria at a cost of $20 billion in lost gross domestic product (GDP)” (9/12).