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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
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Africa: Global Health Fund Updates
Africa: Global Health Fund Updates
Date distributed (ymd): 020316
Document reposted by Africa Action
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africaaction.org
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +health+ +economy/development+
SUMMARY CONTENTS:
This posting contains several documents from the Break the Silence
listserv [contact information below], as the first round of
proposals to the Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis are
being considered. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 6 that
about 50 countries are expected to submit grant proposals, while
fund officials acknowledge that the funds are likely to be
insufficient. Of the total $2 billion pledged to date, only about
$700 million is expected to be available this year, far short of
the estimated $10 billion a year estimated to be needed.
[Note: The list of pledges can be found at:
http://www.un.org/News/ossg/aids.htm
The link on the Global Fund's own website to the list of pledges
is currently not working. There is as yet no public data
available by country on which pledges are to be paid this year.]
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Break the Silence - The international forum on health and
development policy issues
To join email: join-break-the-silence@hdnet.org
To post email: break-the-silence@hdnet.org
For info: info@hdnet.org
Coordinated by Health & Development Networks (HDN)
BTS discussion archives are available through
http://www.hdnet.org/home2.htm or directly at:
http://archives.healthdev.net/bts
Global Fund Names Technical Review Panel to Review Funding
Proposals
Global Fund Press Release
GENEVA, March 11, 2002
Contacts:
Melanie Zipperer at +41 22 791 9456 (office) or +41 79 477 1722
(mobile), or Leyla Alyanak at +41 22 791 9455 (office).
Further information on the Global Fund can be found at
http://www.globalfundatm.org
First Grant Awards to be Announced in April
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a new
initiative to combat the epidemics that kill six million people
each year, today announced the appointment of an international
panel of experts that will review all grant proposals and make
recommendations to the Board for funding.
The 17-member Technical Review Panel includes experts in disease
control and prevention, clinical care, health education, and
international development. All members of the panel have worked
in the developing world, where the HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria
epidemics have the greatest impact.
The Technical Review Panel will meet in Geneva from 25 March to 5
April to review the first round of funding proposals. The Board
will make final funding decisions, and will announce the first
grant awards at the conclusion of its next meeting, scheduled for
22-24 April in New York.
"This panel of experts will help the Global Fund to identify
projects that will have clear and demonstrable impact in the
fight against AIDS, TB, and malaria," said Dr. Chrispus Kiyonga, the
Fund's Board Chair, who announced the appointments today.
"We are very pleased that the Fund will be guided by some of the
world's leading public health authorities, who bring with them
invaluable technical knowledge and extensive field experience."
Technical Review Panel members were selected from a group of
almost 700 nominees from around the world. Members of the panel were
drawn from government and non-governmental organizations, the
developed and developing worlds, and the public and private
sectors. Panel members will serve in their personal capacities
as experts in their fields, not as representatives of their
institutions or governments.
Appointees to the Technical Review Panel include:
Jonathan Broomberg, South Africa
Alex Godwin Coutinho, Uganda
Usa Duongsaa, Thailand
Paula Fujiwara, USA
Sarah Julia Gordon, Guyana
Ranieri Guerra, Italy
Michel Kazatchkine, France
Peter Kazembe, Malawi
Mary Ann Lansang, Philippines
Fabio Luelmo, Argentina
Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, Poland
Jane Elizabeth Miller, UK
Toru Mori, Japan
Peter Sandiford, New Zealand
Amadou Sy Elhadj, Senegal
Valdilea Veloso Dos Santos, Brazil
Kong-Lai Zhang, China
About the Global Fund
AIDS, TB and malaria have a devastating global impact, causing
nearly six million deaths a year - 10% of the world's total. The
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is an
independent public-private partnership working to increase global
resources to combat the three diseases, to direct these resources
where they are needed most, and to ensure that they are used
effectively. The Fund was created to share resources and
expertise across national boundaries and private and public sectors in
order to make an ongoing and significant contribution to the goal of
reducing infections, illness, and death. The Fund will disburse
between $700-$800 million in 2002, effectively increasing global
spending on these epidemics by 50%.
March 13, 2002
Preparations for the GFATM's Next Deadline
Josh Ruxin
Proposals from dozens of countries poured into the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria this weekend to meet the
March 10 deadline. In the days leading up to the deadline, many
countries altered the amounts requested based on donor pressure
and based on the emerging understanding that insufficient funds would
be available for the proposals presented. In other words, we had
pre-proposal rationing. This must change immediately. In order
to make the case that increased level of funds are needed, the GFATM
must receive proposals in excess of funds available and which are
of a high quality, demonstrate capacity for implementation, and
are built around transparent processes.
The Access Project for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria has already helped a half dozen countries in their
proposal preparations. Many others are doing the same. In
order to ensure coordination of our efforts and complete transparency
in the process, we propose the following:
1) All proposals to the GFATM should circulate freely on-line, so
that all can help to ensure transparency in the next steps of the
process. The Global Fund itself should post all of the proposals
on its own website, and we should insist upon that as a matter of
transparency and good governance. In the meantime, we shall post
all proposals received with CCM approval on our web site:
http://www.cid.harvard.edu/gf/.
[Note: As of March 16, proposals
from Malawi and Nigeria have been posted on the site] Please
encourage countries with which you work to pass along their
proposals. Here are the reasons doing so is in their interest:N
- It provides all countries with knowledge of what shape
proposals may take, and what level of detail is requiredN
- It provides a place where the world can see the proposals that
are being submitted and why funds must be increased in order to
support these initiativesN
- It provides a distribution mechanism for NGOs and others
in-country who would like to see what their CCM has submittedN
2) The GFATM should ensure the world that proposals will be
judged on their merits, not according to artificial (and undisclosed)
dollar limits dreamt up by donors. Many proposal writers were
told of an undisclosed rule that countries would receive no more than
$2 per capita in grants. If this informal rule was indeed
established, it must be repudiated. If it was not established,
it must be denied forthrightly.
3) The technical review committee [panel] should be allowed to
operate without political interference. It should be instructed
to judge proposals on their scientific and public health merits and
feasibility, not according to any rule of size of grants per
country.
4) The recommendations of the technical review committee should
be posted on the GFATM website regarding all proposals received.
5) The decisions of the GFATM in all cases should be posted on
the website.
6) The next round of grant applications should be announced
before the end of March, and should call for applications no later than
August 1. Country teams should begin to organize their
second-round proposals as soon as possible. With a deadline of
August 1, there will be scope at the country level for scaling up
bolder and more comprehensive proposals than were submitted in
the first round. The second-round funding requests will therefore be
considerably larger than in the first round.
The Access Project for the GFATM is based at the Center for
International Development at Harvard University and will assist
in
this monitoring process and in 2nd round proposal preparation.
Please contact Dr. Josh Ruxin (Josh_Ruxin@harvard.edu,
617-496-0737).
Josh Ruxin
Project Director
The Access Project for The Global Fund
to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Center for International Development
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone (617)496-0737 Fax (617)496-6555
Josh_Ruxin@harvard.edu
Access Project goals (from http://www.cid.harvard.edu/gf):
Goals
The Access Project for the Global Fund has no official ties to
the Global Fund but does coordinate its activities with a range of
organizations and agencies that are interested in the Global
Fund's success. The Access Project has the following goals:
- To help countries, NGOs, and other groups prepare the best
possible proposals informed by insight from teams of experts from
Harvard and other institutionsN
- To ensure that lessons learned from the proposal process are
disseminated to all parties interested in pursuing financing from
the Global FundN
- To make use of the internet in pursuing these goals
In order to accomplish these goals, the Access Project works with
several groups at Harvard that specialize in AIDS, tuberculosis,
and malaria. For AIDS-related issues, the main groups are led by
Dr. Bruce Walker from the Partners AIDS Research Center at Mass
General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and by Drs. Max Essex
and Ric Marlink from the Harvard AIDS Institute. For malaria the
team is led by Dr. Andrew Spielman at the Harvard School of
Public Health. For tuberculosis, the Access Project collaborates with
Drs. Paul Farmer, Jim Kim, and Serena Koenig from Harvard Medical
School and Partners in Health. Dr. Josh Ruxin heads a team with
representatives from all of these groups.
Moderator's note:
Josh's message above also reminds us of some of the
recommendations made by NGOs during the GFATM Consultation meeting held in
Brussels in November last year:
- Reports on implementation of funded programs should be signed
off by all partners, including NGOs and civil society partners.
- In order to ensure maximum transparency in GFATM activities,
all fund proposals, interim and final reports, as well as other
supporting/review documentation, and working documents of the
GFATM Board, Secretariat and Global Partnership Forum should be
available publicly and for comment in a timely way.
- Current proposals should be posted and open for comment on the
internet. The comments should be made available to the Technical
Review Panel (TRP) within the established proposal review time
frame. This is to ensure transparency, to allow sharing of ideas
between countries and to contribute to capacity building. It is
in keeping in with the environmental impact assessment precedent
requiring public hearings.
- In some countries there may not be sufficient capacity to
effectively apply for funds and this will need technical and
financial support in order to prepare and submit a Fund proposal.
The Fund should provide for this type of support and related
capacity-building.
Taken from: Key Recommendations from the NGO Consultation
Meeting
(Brussels 12 - 13 November 2001) - section focusing on
Accountability & Eligibility]
Posted by gorik@hotmail.com (Gorik)
Dear all,
Should we not be fighting for more money in the Global Fund,
rather than hoping that our proposal is better than those written by our
neighbors?
On Friday, March 8, 2002, Mozambique sent its proposal to the
Global Fund. It was the result of 6 weeks of hard work, all major
stakeholders participating as much as they could in a sometimes
confusing - because of lack of time to plan meetings and send out
invitations - process.
We did have one advantage. Since the International AIDS
Conference in Durban, 2000, both Ministry of Health and National AIDS
Council are systematically discussing all possible interventions to
combat HIV/AIDS in workgroups and meetings that are open to all the
stakeholders. So we already knew what had to be done - in the
field of HIV/AIDS - when the Global Fund sent out its call for
proposals. We still needed to define who was going to do it, when and where
first; enough questions to keep us busy.
We also had one enormous disadvantage. Mozambique being one of
the poorest countries in the world, its institutions are dramatically
under-funded. And institutional capacity is what you need to make
a good plan look good on paper. We fear the competition of other
countries that can easily line up a battalion of experts in
writing proposals. But we count on the wisdom of the Global Fund
Technical Review Panel to look behind appearances.
We fear the competition of other countries. One thing we have
experienced during this process is that the $700 million
currently available represent nothing more than a fig leaf. A fig leaf that
must cover what is really going on in this region: a combination
of epidemics that kill more people than a full battery of atomic
bombs could. AIDS, TB and Malaria… each of them kills more than atomic
bombs. There is no flashlight, no mushroom in the sky, only
graveyards getting fuller by the day. They are silent atomic
bombs. And the world sends us a fig leaf.
At the end of the process, we compared our budgets with those
mentioned in the famous Schwartlander et al. article ("Resource
Needs for HIV/AIDS", Schwartlander et al., Science Express, June
21, 2001.) It seems that we are going to do it just a little bit
cheaper. Therefore, we can assume that the projected $9.2 billion
for HIV/AIDS and $1.3 to 2.6 billion for TB and Malaria are
valid. And thus that the $10 billion requested by the Global Fund are
reasonable, if not under-estimated.
So why are we waiting for April 25 to find out what we already
know: that there are not enough funds available? Shouldn't we,
members of Country Coordination Mechanisms (CCM) from all over
the world join our hands and voices and demand more funds right away,
before March 25, before the Technical Review Panel starts its
impossible job to choose between proposals that are all of vital
importance?
The International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, later this year,
should have a specific workgroup to transform the actual Global
Fund, depending on the instable generosity of donor countries,
into a fund that can count on $10 billion per year, constituted by
automatic contributions of all UN member states, according to
their gross domestic product.
But before Barcelona 2002, we can already voice our main concern:
more money is needed. Send it to the Global Fund and to Break The
Silence, they will know how to use it: proposals@tss-twg.be and
break-the-silence@hdnet.org
And do send a copy to all your friends who care, ask them to
join.
Send it on behalf of your CCM, send it as a member of a CCM. or
just send it as an organization or individual - who cares. Just
write one simple line: THE GLOBAL FUND NEEDS MORE FUNDS, or
elaborate, if you can. It will make a difference!
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by
Africa Action (incorporating the Africa Policy Information
Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa).
Africa Action's information services provide accessible
information and analysis in order to promote U.S. and
international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of human
rights.
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