Malaria
Before departing for the weekend, we’re going to bump this blog post to the top of the feed. If you haven’t yet, please read it:
We’re big supporters of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria here at ONE, with so many of our members helping raise awareness about the great work it’s doing to save lives. Despite fantastic results — providing AIDS treatment for 3 million people, anti-TB treatment for 7.7 million people, and 160 million insecticide-treated bed nets for prevention of malaria – the Global Fund is under attack.
Columnist Mike Gerson has just written an excellent column on this issue that’s published in today’s Washington Post. We encourage you to read it, and share it widely!
We at ONE have been working hard to respond to this wave of negative coverage of the Fund, which is based almost entirely on one initial press report that took incidents in a few countries where funding was misappropriated – incidents caught and identified by the Fund itself! – and twisted them to imply that fraud was widespread. We blogged here on this, joining other allies in trying to get out the facts. It’s been tough, with so many being all too willing to believe the worst.
We’re also pleased to hear that the Global Fund announced today that it is taking some extra measures to increase its vigilance, including an external review of all of its financial safety systems. Those already in place are robust, but this might help assuage the donors. The Global Fund needs to deal with this problem to be sure, but its most important work is to speed resources to countries fighting three raging epidemics and the sooner it can get back to that the better.
This post is also featured at the Huffington Post.
Over the weekend, the Associated Press filed a story about corruption involving a small number of grants made by the Global Fund, an international partnership that channels funds to fight AIDS, TB and malaria from donors, like the United States, to some of the poorest countries in the world. It’s always interesting to me when stories create news with misused facts and salacious headlines. So I thought it might be useful to have a little background and perspective from someone who’s spent a lot of time with the Global Fund.
The AP report was correct in saying that the Global Fund’s Inspector General has taken an aggressive approach to rooting out and publicizing incidents of fraud and abuse, but the story erred by extrapolating the findings in a few countries to tarnish the entire grant portfolio. Let’s put this to rest: there is absolutely no evidence that there is widespread fraud or corruption of Fund grants. On the contrary, of the $13 billion disbursed by the Global Fund to date, only a portion has been audited by the Global Fund’s inspector general, and of that only a relatively small amount — US $43 million — has been rescinded.
Now just because the percentage of grants found to be misused is relatively small doesn’t mean it’s okay — just the opposite. That’s still a lot of money, and it should piss off anyone who cares about the world’s poorest. We should not rest until all taxpayer supported programs can report no misuse of funds — including those administered right here at home.
While I was thinking about this over my morning coffee, I spied a New York Times front-page article that started, “Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud.” Now I’m willing to bet that all those gloating over the Global Fund stories won’t get nearly so exercised about this kind of pervasive corruption.
I also don’t want to fall into the trap of denying there are problems. We will undoubtedly hear about other instances of abuse. So I’m thankful that the Global Fund and its partners, especially the countries that desperately need the money, take this all very seriously.
There’s already lots of work underway to continue to make improvements. The Fund is pursuing suspected corruption aggressively, usually in close cooperation with local authorities: corrupt officials are going to jail, funds are being returned, new safeguards are being put in place. At the same time, the Global Fund is working hard to strike a balance, continuing its policy of zero tolerance for corruption while not becoming so risk adverse that it can’t get its job done.
So in the end what’s the conclusion? We should celebrate the openness of the Global Fund, even if the information it provides can be abused. We should fight hard to support programs that improve global health AND governance and transparency — fighting for funds needed to save lives and at the same time to build robust systems and checks and balances needed to guaranty their effective use. And we should feel proud that we’ve helped the Global Fund weather this storm and continue its amazing work to save lives.
A quicker TB diagnosis: The World Health Organization is endorsing a new tuberculosis testing apparatus that does not need trained laboratory technicians and takes less than two hours. The device is being hailed as a “major milestone” in diagnosis of selected patients — despite drawbacks like its expense, fragility and need for electricity. The WHO recommends it for patients who doctors suspect have a drug-resistant strain or who are also infected with the HIV.
The cost of a malaria-free world: As governments in poor countries and donors from wealthy ones weigh up where to put their money, experts have begun a quiet but fundamental debate about whether wiping out malaria is realistic or even makes economic sense. According to malaria expert, Oliver Sabot, there is little doubt that malaria can be eliminated, “but the question is: What is the best value for our dollar? And this is an increasingly pressing question as we look at the global economic climate.”
53 percent: South Africa’s health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, says he has brought down the cost of HIV drugs by 53 percent, allowing the government to treat twice as many patients in the next two years. The government has saved millions by encouraging potential suppliers to participate in the bidding process, requesting a breakdown of costs from suppliers and monitoring price changes. South Africa has the largest anti-retroviral distribution program in the world but pays significantly higher drug prices than other countries, Motsoaledi says.
Texting to combat fake medicines: A pilot scheme in Kenya and Ghana has begun putting unique scratch codes on more than 500,000 medicine bottles and packets of pills, which, when texted to a free phone number, will reveal whether the drug is genuine or not. The scheme hopes to combat the rise in fake medicines, which is made more acute in Africa because “some fake medicines being offered to the sick are watered down versions of the real thing and dent the efficacy of the full strength drug.”
Ending decades-long enmity: Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos started a historic first state visit to South Africa, “a trip aimed at ending decades-long enmity between two of the region’s major economies.” His visit follows President Jacob Zuma’s trip to the oil-rich state in 2009, which confirmed an easing of tensions between Africa’s top producer of crude oil after decades of strained relations under apartheid and the early years of black-majority rule.
Our ONE Campus groups were out in full force last week in the name of Halloween festive fun, helping to make our unique flier campaign a huge success. With fliers plastering campuses from Michigan to California, students from 14 schools helped to get the word out on ONE’s issues in the lead-up to the spookiest weekend of the year.
In addition to having a frighteningly fun Halloween, participating ONE Campus groups shared facts about malaria and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, with many also holding events (think of bed nets as cobwebs, people) to help get their fellow college students get into the festive spirit. But just because trick-or-treating and Halloween are over, it doesn’t mean we’ve reached the end of our poverty-fighting efforts. ONE Campus Season 4 is officially in full swing, so stay tuned for other fun and unique campaigns that our college students are working on and how you can get involved on your campus and community this year.
Yesterday, I started my day off on the right foot at a press conference held by Roll Back Malaria. The organization was officially launching their report, “Saving Lives with Malaria Control: Counting Down to the Millennium Development Goals.”
The report highlights the success of global investments in malaria control, in addition to demonstrating the need for continued support for the Millennium Development Goals.
I learned that three-quarters of a million children across 34 African countries have been saved in the last 10 years through malaria control efforts. The report estimates that continued investment in malaria control could save an additional 3 million lives by 2015.
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The U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is less than two weeks away, so what better way to jump into the issues than by – hmm – reading up on them?
This week, Melinda French Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is blogging about the MDGs in advance of their TEDxChange event, which looks into the future of global health and development.
So far, she has posted three fantastic pieces on breastfeeding, malaria and immunization. As always, her blog posts are filled with personal stories, interesting facts and figures and a refreshing sense of optimism.
Take a look at her posts on the Foundation Blog and be sure to leave a comment. Keeping the conversation going on important global health issues like these will help ensure that extreme poverty is at the forefront of our minds.
In this blog post, Natasha Bilimoria, president of Friends of the Global Fight, discusses how the Global Fund helps boost developing countries’ good governance and self-reliance.
Eight years into its work, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has far exceeded expectations. It set out to provide significant new resources to countries in need of global health support, and it now finances two-thirds of all efforts to combat malaria and tuberculosis and one-quarter of all HIV/AIDS programs worldwide. In total, the Global Fund has allocated more than $19 billion in 145 countries around the world.
But the Global Fund and its donors are far from the only actors here. Recipient countries play the starring role in the fight for better health. From the beginning, one of the Global Fund’s fundamental principles has been to support programs that evolve from the needs of a particular country, and that is what’s happening on the ground today.
Here’s the model: Together, stakeholders in a country develop and submit a grant proposal to the Global Fund based on national priorities. This means representatives from government, nongovernmental organizations, universities and private businesses, as well as people living with the diseases, identify their country’s health problems and solutions.
Once the Global Fund awards a grant, these stakeholders are then responsible for implementing proposed programs in their country.
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