The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in partnership with the Tata Trusts, has announced the launch of an India Health Fund.

A financing platform designed to leverage and pool private-sector resources and expertise, the fund will help address key health challenges in the country by supporting the Global Fund and its partners' efforts to scale effective solutions aimed at stemming the spread of communicable diseases, starting with malaria and tuberculosis. Investments made by the fund will be aligned with India's national strategies for the diseases and linked to government platforms and other private health networks, while its other areas of focus will include strengthening public and private health systems, addressing the underlying vulnerabilities that drive infection rates, and research and development. USAID also plans to join the fund, the Press Trust of India reports.

"Infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, though widespread, are treatable and controllable," said Tata Trusts chair Ratan Tata. "In order to overcome the challenges associated with this issue, we should use innovations to create models that are not geographically bound and can be replicated anywhere in the world."

In a blog post applauding the launch of the fund, Mark Dybul, executive director of the Global Fund, wrote: "By bringing about more and more players to the fight, we promote and contribute to achieving transformative impact to deliver effective results in global health. At a time when many parts of the world face growing turmoil from social and economic change, we can either succumb to fear and look backward and inward, or we can harness the power of the human spirit into positive change by looking forward and outward. Working together as people, as communities, as nations, all connected — we can solve tremendous problems, including ending deadly epidemics."