Hello all! Although my profile says I am based in Japan, my work on HIV AIDS takes place in Southeast Asia. I'd like to thank everyone for her / his valuable and experience-based contributions. I've found it to be true in my experience of 13 years in this capacity that organisations working directly with impacted people are not likely to be receiving support from the Global Fund. Necessarily this is due to administrative considerations. However, whether I visit patient groups or tiny rural health stations in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, or Laos, I see the same thing. Groups eligible for funding are waiting for disbursements from larger regional organisations that are funded by the Global Fund, and there's just not enough to go around. In the rural areas where I work, that means no access to treatment, and preventable deaths. The last time there was an international AIDS conference in Bangkok, my own NGO provided money for food to the participants from one of my partner organisations, because their disbursement from the Global Fund gave them the equivalent of less than $3 U.S. dollars per day beyond travel expense. They slept on the floor of the conference venue because they had no money for lodging. The people we are, and should continue to be concerned with, are resource-poor. They have their own ways of living with and combatting HIV, but being ignored by the Global Fund won't help them, their countries, or the Global Fund itself. -- LYNN THIESMEYER