LYON, France (Reuters) – International donors pledged around $14 billion to fight AIDS on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron told a donors’ conference in city of Lyon.
Celebrities at the event included Microsoft founder Bill Gates and U2 pop star Bono, who have both been often involved in AIDS fundraisers.
“I am happy to tell you that yes, we have managed to raise 14 billion,” Macron told the event, at which donors also pledged money to tackle tuberculosis and malaria.
According to the World Health Organization, there were 37.9 million people living with HIV/AIDS across the globe in 2018. (https://www.who.int/hiv/data/en/)
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Benoit Van Overstraeten, Matthieu Protard and Henri-Pierre Andre; Editing by John Stonestreet and Nick Macfie)
