International
Global Fund
Bob Geldof on investing in Africa
As part of the “African Century” edition of The Globe and Mail this week, Bob Geldof sat down with David Berman to discuss Africa’s economic potential, and what the future holds for investors in the continent.
Check out part 1 here, and part 2 here
ONE urges donors to fully fund the Global Fund and GAVI
Donors have just met in The Hague to discuss the impacts, efficacy, and future resource needs for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (the Global Fund) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI).
ONE has long championed the transformational impact these mechanisms have had. Both the Global Fund and GAVI are even more critical now, as we enter the last stretch to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deadline; if the Global Fund and GAVI are not fully financed during the next three years – the period covered by the Fund’s replenishment cycle—the MDGs will not be met and the mechanisms will be unable to scale up their life-saving work.
“We know these mechanisms are effective and cost-effective,” said Josh Lozman, ONE’s Chief of Staff and Senior Global Health Policy Advisor. “Only if they are fully financed between now and 2015 can we eliminate malaria as a major public health problem in the world, ensure no child is born with HIV, and prevent more than 4.2 million future child deaths through vaccination. In spite of the economic climate, investments in these mechanisms will allow us to achieve major milestones in global health.”
Both mechanisms have achieved impressive results through their partnership together and with donors, recipient countries, and civil society:
- Global Fund-supported programs save an estimated 3,600 lives every day. The Global Fund supports anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS for 2.5 million people, treatment for tuberculosis for 6 million people, and bed nets to prevent malaria for 104 million people.
- GAVI-supported work has averted an estimated 5.4 million deaths by vaccinating more than 257 million children.
The Global Fund will hold a pledging conference in October 2010 during which donors will commit to funding levels for the next three years; GAVI’s funding will be decided through annual budget processes in donor countries. Full funding of these two mechanisms is one of ONE’s top priorities and will be the focus of campaigning efforts during this year.
Delivering in The Hague
In the past few weeks, ONE’s Women ONE2ONE Initiative has run an online campaign collecting signatures of members in order to draw attention to the critical work the Global Fund is doing on women’s health and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV. While the Global Fund is best known for its disease-specific work around HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria, we’ve been learning in The Hague how much of an impact the Global Fund has made on maternal and child health in the last decade. They’ve also outlined the path for the world to eliminate PMTCT by 2015—an incredible, feasible opportunity to ensure that every child born across the world is born HIV-free.
This afternoon, we were able to catch up with the Global Fund’s Executive Director, Professor Michel Kazatchkine, and deliver nearly 20,000 ONE member signatures. In our time with him, we shared how grateful ONE is for the Global Fund’s emphasis on the health of women and children, and demonstrated to both him and the Global Fund’s donors that there is real grassroots support behind full funding for the Global Fund that will allow for an expansion of PMTCT and women-focused efforts. He shared his thanks to ONE’s signatories, and we feel confident that the Global Fund is serious about its commitment to the health of women around the world.
Thanks to all of our members who have shown your support to-date! If you haven’t had the chance to sign yet, or if you’d like to share this important message with your friends and family, please visit http://www.one.org/women/gobeyond.html.
Impressive Results
This week, the Global Fund reviewed its results to date, challenges and opportunities with its donors and some civil society groups. I had the pleasure of representing (RED) and ONE at this meeting. The Global Fund has delivered impressive results during its 8 year lifespan. We have reported on these before but it’s worth saying again – an estimated 4.9 million lives saved, at least 3600 per day. The results are impressive in fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, but it is clear that the Global Fund is also having a significant impact across the health spectrum – helping to train health workers and improve health infrastructure that improves health overall.
As my colleague Erin wrote earlier on this blog, the Global Fund is in the midst of its replenishment effort – a process to determine the Global Fund’s financing levels for the next three years. Let’s be blunt. If you were to pick a year for a three-year replenishment, this probably would not be it. A financial crisis does not lead to donors being particularly generous. That said, he are a few takeaways:
- The tone here is one of family in many ways. There is a sense of solidarity about the Global Fund among donors including universal praise for its transformational effects on the health of the world’s poorest people. Many in the room were in the room when the Global Fund was created; the results delivered since create a sense of pride among many governments.
- Despite donors positive feelings about the Fund, there are clearly concerns about the competition for scarcer domestic resources during the next three years. Donors pledged $10 billion in Berlin in 2007 at the last replenishment. The Global Fund needs between $17 and $20 billion to continue to expand services for the poor at the rate that it has previously. Some donors expressed a feeling that $13 billion was a more pragmatic target, but acknowledged that this will not allow for scale up of new, technically sound proposals.
- Importantly, the language of this meeting is very different than the UN and G8 meetings when the Fund was created. Those that were there in 2000 and 2001 characterized it by words like “emergency and disarray.” The common themes at this meeting were about “partnership, synergies, optimizing results, sustainability and local ownership.” Yes, a lot of those words are global development jargon, but it demonstrates how far the Global Fund and its partners and recipient countries have come that the discussions have turned to these longer-term plans rather than a crisis response.
I will write more soon about the reactions of donors to the funding scenarios and the future of the Global Fund.
Live from The Hague
This week in The Hague, the major donors for both the Global Fund and GAVI have come together to discuss the impact to-date and financial needs of both mechanisms. Josh Lozman and I—part of ONE’s health policy team—are here to listen, learn, and provide support as donors consider their respective contributions in the years ahead. In anticipation of these meetings, both mechanisms have released new data demonstrating just how impactful they have been. The Global Fund has funded impressive programs in 140 countries that has provided antiretroviral treatment for 2.5 million people with HIV, DOTS treatment for 6 million patients with TB, and 104 million insecticide-treated bed nets to protect families from malaria. GAVI has made major strides in aggregating demand for vaccines and driving down vaccine prices, and has saved an estimated 5.4 million children’s lives.
These results have come in partnership with national governments and local groups across the developing world, but also through the significant investments made by donor countries. 2010 marks a critical year for both mechanisms as they look to secure new commitments from donors to both continue and advance their critical work around infectious disease and maternal and child health; the Global Fund enters into this replenishment period (during which donors will make pledges for funding to the Global Fund over the next three years) having projected a need of roughly $17-20 billion, and GAVI estimates that it needs an additional $4.3 billion by 2015. In a time of intense fiscal restraint, these numbers are worthy but massive, and so as advocates we have our work cut out for us as we encourage donors to contribute their fair share.
In our first day here, we’ve been able to participate in a pre-replenishment meeting of civil society organizations focused on the Global Fund, and it’s been fascinating to hear the perspectives of groups from all over the world. While there is a lot on which we don’t agree, there is also a sense of great potential if we can harness the collective energy and core competencies of these groups to push our members and governments toward a common purpose—fully funding the Global Fund.
Stay tuned this week as we send you updates from each day of the meeting—tomorrow’s focus will be specifically on the Global Fund, Thursday will focus on a unique joint Global Fund/GAVI session, and Friday will focus on GAVI and will suggest what we’ve learned and how to move it forward as ONE in the remainder of the year.
Global Fund and (RED) Provide Hope at Tema General Hospital in Ghana
ONE is embarking on a listening and learning trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya with members of our board and other supporters. Christy Turlington Burns checks in:
I met an inspiring woman a few days ago in Accra, Ghana. Her name was Elizabeth*. She is a mother, a widow and she is HIV positive. This may sound pretty grim, but what I learned from spending some time with her is that Elizabeth and her two-year-old daughter Abigail* are getting the care they need here at the Tema General Hospital.
Elizabeth learned about her HIV positive status when she came here to be tested after her husband died a few years ago. She was pregnant at the time, which was actually a blessing, because it enabled her to begin antiretroviral treatment at a critical time for Abigail. Abigail takes a prophylactic drug to prevent infection of the AIDS virus.
I also spent some time with the nurses here who counsel the families who come into the clinic from up to a 15 kilometer radius to be tested. They shared other stories like Elizabeth’s, where women sought them out to be tested and then treated if their results were positive. When mothers have access to ARVs, they use them. And when they use them the chances of vertical transmission (when the virus travels inadvertently from the pregnant mother to her child) are minimal. At Tema, a mere 4% of babies whose mothers have begun treatment test positive. I was told that just a few years ago things were not nearly as hopeful.
Before the Global Fund and (RED) started distributing money to treat and prevent AIDS, there was very little incentive for the poor in Ghana to test because having HIV was a virtual death sentence.
Dr. Patricia Nsamoah, a senior medical officer and HIV focal person at TEMA, told us about the state of the clinic before they received Global Fund (RED) money.
“We’ve been testing HIV for a very long time, but basically people just didn’t know what to do if they tested positive for HIV,” Dr. Nsamoah said. “So when ARVs came, the Global Fund made it possible for us to have access to ARVs. You can at least see a patient, treat opportunistic infections, test for CD4, and at the point when they need the ARVs it is available and you can have a success story. Previously if you were working in the fever unit as the doctor in charge, what you did at the beginning of every morning was to sign death certificates because overnight by the time you came people had just died. But now a lot has changed… I’m telling you the clinic just grows bigger because people do not die.”
Today, Tema serves more than 2,200 people infected with HIV/AIDS in Ghana. These families are thriving and they are hopeful despite all they have endured. Abigail is a beautiful, curious little girl. She is confident with wise eyes that have seen the future.
*Elizabeth and Abigail’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.
Global Fund – NGOs dig deeper
In 2007 the German government hosted a replenishment conference for the Global Fund in Berlin, where governments met to decide how much to contribute to the fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
To underline its role as host, Germany promised to annually give €200m to the fund between 2008 and 2010.
Right now, the German parliament (the Bundestag) is discussing the 2010 budget. We were therefore quite surprised to see that section 23 – the part of the budget that holds most of the funds going to development – foresees only €142m for the Global Fund. The development ministry was quick to clarify that the remaining €58m would come from funds that were not used throughout the year, and that those funds just wouldn’t show up in the budget proposal. But ONE and other NGOs are wondering: Why the hide-and-seek?
So ONE and 10 other NGOs, including Oxfam and Medicines Sans Frontiers, have published an open letter addressed to the parliamentarians who report to the budget committee, in which we call on the Bundestag to include the full funds that were promised in the 2010 budget.
We’ll keep you posted on further developments!
Big news from Germany
In 2007, Germany pledged €600 million between 2008 and 2010 for the Global Fund at its own replenishment conference here in Berlin. ONE repeatedly praised Germany for this commitment. So for us it came as a shock when we learned that the Government’s budget proposal for 2010 did not follow through: Global Fund contributions were actually reduced by €58m to €142m in 2010. This would have meant that the host of the last replenishment would be breaking its own promise in a year of the next replenishment – a really bad move.
This Tuesday, the Ministry of Development Cooperation reversed the cuts. The shortfall of 58 million Euros will now come from unspent 2009 money and the “planning reserve” (financial reserves for unexpected expenditures) in the 2010 budget, we and others were told by the Deputy Minister. This money will not be taken away from other budgeted programs as far as we know.
The Financial Times Deutschland on Wednesday reported on the protests against the cuts, using the headline: “Cuts of Anti-Aids-Support Causes Protests” / “Development Ministry back pedals after criticism”. The paper mentions the organization ONE (“who is supported by Rockstar Bono”…) along with our NGO-friends DSW criticizing the Government for breaking its promises.
Global Fund announces largest single malaria initiative in history
Today, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Federal Ministry of Health of Nigeria announced the largest single malaria initiative ever signed by the Global Fund, which will provide the resources for 30 million bed-nets in Nigeria. Each year, there are approximately 57 million cases of malaria in Nigeria, causing an estimated 225,000 deaths annually.
As part of its efforts to eliminate malaria, Nigeria aims to place two bed nets in every household in the country by distributing 62 million bed nets by December 2010. Global Fund grants will provide half of this total. Other contributors include: the World Bank, DFiD, USAID, UNITAID, UNICEF and the Nigerian government.
“I am extremely pleased that our partnership with Nigeria continues to grow: it shows Nigeria’s strong commitment to fight malaria, and strengthens our relationship since Nigeria is also a Global Fund donor,” said Professor Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund. “Nigeria is showing why reaching global targets for malaria is no longer fanciful but something that can actually be achieved,” he said.
The malaria grants signed today amount to US$ 285 million over two years. The Global Fund used a flexible approach by signing, in July 2009, an interim agreement to allow for the timely distribution of 3.4 millions bed nets, which have just arrived in country in time for the mass distribution campaign planned for December this year. Two other grants were also signed, one for tuberculosis for US$40 million and one for Health Systems Strengthening for US$55 million.
Busy September
It’s hard to keep track of our calendars here at ONE these days, as the next two weeks are jam-packed with important development events over in the US. Over the coming days, folks at ONE will be attending the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh (September 24-25), the UN General Assembly (the 64th session opened yesterday), a UN Summit on Climate Change (September 22), the Clinton Global Initiative (September 22-25) and a special seminar organised by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in New York.
It’s an important two weeks for the development community, as critical issues—innovative financing for global health, climate change funding, women’s empowerment, global economic recovery—will all be put on the table. Make sure to stay tuned to ONE’s blog, as we’ll provide updates on our travels throughout the coming weeks.
-Kara Arsenault
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TAGS: Bob Geldof, Global Fund, Trade