TORONTO, Aug 14, 2006 (AFP) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria said Monday it had received appeals for an additional 5.8 billion dollars to combat the three killer diseases over the next five years.

The Fund, a spearhead in the war on AIDS, called on governments and individual donors to dig deep into their pockets to help meet its funding goal.

"We need more finance, much more finance, and we need reliable and predictable finance," the executive director of the Fund, Richard Feachem, said at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto.

"There is still a major gap to fill."

The newly-submitted proposals have been filed by 97 countries for 185 projects.

Forty percent of proposals are for combatting HIV/AIDS; 31 percent malaria; and 29 percent tuberculosis. In line with previous requests, the largest number of requests for financial support come from Africa, accounting for 60 percent of funding appeals.

Last Wednesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged 500 million dollars to the Fund, which will be paid in annual amounts of 100 million dollars, with 2006 as the starting year.

For 2006, the Fund has so far amassed pledges of 525 million dollars, leaving it with a shortfall of around half a billion dollars.

Its needs in 2006 comprise 1.1 billion in new funding, as well as 1.8 billion in funds for initiatives that have already been launched. The Fund's board wants to approve the new funding, known as the Sixth Round, in November.

Fifty-five percent of the fund is spent on AIDS, with the rest for TB and malaria.

To date, the Global Fund has approved 5.5 billion dollars for initiatives against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in 132 countries, according to figures posted on its website.

The Global Fund was created in January 2002 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to coax funds and channel this money into local projects in poor nations.

According to an estimate made in May by the UN agency UNAIDS, 8.9 billion dollars is likely to be committed to the fight against AIDS, from all sources, in 2006.

This compares with a mere 1.6 billion dollars in 2001, but also with needs in 2006 of 14.9 billion dollars, of 18.1 billion dollars in 2007 and 22.1 billion dollars in 2008.

At the end of last year, 38.6 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), UNAIDS estimates. Around 4.1 million people became infected in 2005.

The International AIDS Conference runs until Friday, gathering 21,000 researchers, fund-raisers, care givers and other actors in the 25-year fight against AIDS, a disease that has claimed 25 million lives.

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