 |
|
 |
|||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||
Africa Policy E-Journal
Africa: Global Health Fund Updates 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 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: +++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Break the Silence - The international forum on health and development policy issues
To join email: join-break-the-silence@hdnet.org
Global Fund Names Technical Review Panel to Review Funding Proposals Global Fund Press Release GENEVA, March 11, 2002
Contacts: 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 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:
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
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:
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:
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!
Documents previously distributed in the e-journal are
available on the Africa Action website: To be added to or dropped from the e-journal subscription list, write to e-journal@africaaction.org. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the source mentioned in the posting.
|
|
Africa Policy E-Journal
