On 26-27 April 2016, the Global Fund Board held its 35th meeting in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The Board approved a new strategy “The Global Fund Strategy 2017-2022: Investing to End Epidemics” aimed at maximizing impact, strengthening systems for health, promoting and protecting human rights and gender equality, and mobilizing additional resources. Also the Board approved several key documents reflecting the main decisions made at the meeting: eligibility policy, new policy on sustainability, transition and co-financing, challenging operating environments policy and methodology for the 2017-2019 allocations.
The three civil society delegations – Developing Countries NGOs, Communities and Developed Countries NGOs – worked hard to defend their positions, in partnership with Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean as well as other constituencies. The Alliance for Public Health (Alliance) was represented by its Executive Director Andriy Klepikov, who is a member of the Developing Countries NGOs delegation. Natalia Nizova, Head of the Ukrainian Center for Socially Dangerous Disease Control of the Ministry of Health, also participated in the meeting as a member of the Ukrainian delegation.
Essential changes:
– Key population adjustment was added, namely the “Adjustment factor for populations disproportionately affected by HIV and TB, and in low endemicity malaria settings” to the list of qualitative factors to calculate the country allocations.
– During the clarification process, participants received assurance that sustainability & transition policy will be applicable to those countries currently transiting. Besides, to ensure successful transitions a greater emphasis was put on the transition readiness report. According to the changes introduced to the policy, for the greater assurance that transition process is going right, regular updates will be provided to the Strategy Committee.
– At this stage, the catalytic funding was approved for $800 million in addition to the country allocations. In case of successful replenishment exceeding USD 13 billion, there is a commitment that the Strategy Committee will review and increase the catalytic investments.
“Not all the changes we proposed have been accepted, there are still some serious concerns in regard to the new allocation model. The new methodology shifts primary focus to the countries with the highest burdens of the diseases and least economic capacity. The new formula will unavoidably lead to reduction of funding for middle-income countries with concentrated epidemics. Unfortunately, the new allocation formula will result in reduction of funding for two regions with the most rapidly growing HIV epidemics – Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Middle East and North Africa. In comparison with the previous allocation approach for 2014-2016, the new allocation model in practice will lead to reduction of the share of funding for Eastern Europe and Central Asia from 4.7% to 2.4%, and for Middle East and North Africa – from 8.3% to 5.7%. Latin America and Caribbean will be given the smallest allocation in the new model – 2%. That is why the qualitative adjustments to the formula, up to $800 million catalytic funding, and another up to $800 million to ensure scale-up, impact and pace reduction, are critical to ensure for adequate response to the three diseases in our countries”, – summarized Andriy Klepikov, member of the Developing Country NGOs Delegation to the Global Fund Board, Executive Director of Alliance.