PARIS, March 4, 2010 — The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Dow Jones Indexes signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore the creation of a series of indexes that could be licensed as the basis for investable products. It is envisioned that the flagship of this index series would be a blue-chip index to be called the Dow Jones Global Fund 50 Index. The announcement was made at the international conference on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development organized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and the French development agency in Paris.

Both, The Global Fund and Dow Jones Indexes, hope to benefit from this collaboration. The Global Fund wants to further strengthen its engagement with the private sector and bring to bear the power of financial markets to help save lives. The Global Fund is a leading multilateral financing organization in global health with commitments with more than US$19 billion to date. The collaboration with Dow Jones Indexes as well as product providers to license the index is the latest in a series of innovative finance initiatives undertaken by the Global Fund. Dow Jones Indexes intends to add to its range of socially-conscious indexes that will complement its increasingly diverse range of products.

“Global Fund and Dow Jones Indexes are leaders and innovators in their respective fields. This collaboration will lead to the creation of investable indexes that will be representative of the Global Fund’s goals and mission,” said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes.

“This collaboration with Dow Jones Indexes will provide the financial community with incentives and vehicles to participate in innovative financing of health and development,” said Robert Filipp, head of innovative financing at the Global Fund. “We are excited that the feedback from market participants has been very positive.”

About the Global Fund

The Global Fund is a unique global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities represents a new approach to international health financing. The Global Fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organizations to supplement existing efforts dealing with the three diseases.

Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 19.3 billion for more than 572 programs in 144 countries. It provides a quarter of all international financing for AIDS globally, two-thirds for tuberculosis and three quarters for malaria.

Global Fund financing is enabling countries to strengthen health systems by, for example, making improvements to infrastructure and providing training to those who deliver services. The Global Fund remains committed to working in partnership to scale up the fight against the diseases and to realize its vision – a world free of the burden of AIDS, TB and malaria. www.theglobalfund.org