Abandoned HIV-positive babies Sifiso, left, and Rose in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002. (Denis Farrell/Associated Press)

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV could be eliminated in five years if the current rate of health investments are at least maintained, officials said Monday.

The Global Fund to fight HIV, malaria and tuberculosis released its annual report ahead of a funding meeting in The Hague on March 24.

"A world where no children are born with HIV is truly possible by 2015," said Michel Kazatchkine, head of the Global Fund.

"It is also possible now to imagine a world with no more malaria deaths, since already an increasing number of countries have been reporting a reduction in malaria deaths of more than 50 per cent over the past couple of years," he said.

"No other area of development has seen such a direct and rapid correlation between donor investments and live-saving impact as these investments in fighting AIDS, TB and malaria."

According to the report, programs supported by the fund saved at least 3,600 lives per day in 2009 and an estimated total of 4.9 million since the fund was created in 2002.

UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe and South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi joined Kazatchkine in appealing to governments and private donors to continue investing in the fund.

"Without a fully funded Global Fund, our shared dream of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment care and support could become our worst nightmare — putting the lives of millions of people currently on treatment in jeopardy and millions of pregnant women in a position not able to protect their babies from becoming infected," Sidibe said in a statement on the UNAIDS website.

By the end of 2009, these funded programs provided antiretroviral treatment to 2.5 million people, including 790,000 pregnant women with HIV, which reduces the chances that babies will be born with the virus.

Treatment was also given to six million people who had active TB, and 104 million insecticide-treated nets were provided to prevent malaria.

The group estimated that between $13 billion to $20 billion US will be needed from 2011 to 2013 to meet its goals of eliminating mother-to-child HIV transmission, eliminating malaria as a public health problem within a decade in most countries where it is endemic, and halving the prevalence of TB by 2015.