Posted on November 28, 2011

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Announces New Strategy

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has announced the adoption of a new strategy that it hopes will enable it to save ten million lives and prevent as many as a hundred and eighty million new infections between 2012 and 2016.

Approved by the fund's board, the Consolidated Transformation Plan is designed to help the organization refocus staff and resources on grant management in high-risk countries, reform how it approves grants, strengthen the board's governance processes, and improve the fund's risk management, fiduciary controls, and governance. Earlier this year, an independent review panel recommended a substantial overhaul of the $22 billion organization after several donors raised questions about the misuse of grants.

While the Global Fund currently holds $4 billion in its trustee account and has received pledges that should raise that amount to $10 billion by 2013, a revised resource forecast suggests that substantial budget challenges in some donor countries, compounded by low interest rates, could significantly affect new contributions. Indeed, the report states that the fund will only be able to finance essential services for ongoing programs which end before 2014 through savings in its existing grant portfolio.

"The five-year strategy and transformation plan adopted at the meeting together commit the Global Fund to shift to a new funding model that focuses on investing strategically in countries, populations, and interventions with high potential for impact and strong value for money," said Global Fund chair Simon Bland. "It will provide its funding in a more proactive, flexible, and predictable way. It will better manage risk and it will work more actively with countries and partners to facilitate grant implementation success. In doing so, I believe the Global Fund will shift from an institution that has successfully provided emergency funding to allow countries to cope with the runaway pandemics to become a sustainable, efficient funder of the global efforts to control them and eventually win the battle against AIDS, TB, and malaria."