Getting away from its crisis, the Global Fund has approved a new funding mechanism
Saturday, December 01st 2012
At the twenty-eighth board meeting mid-November 2012, the Global Fund has approved to change its way of funding countries’ programs against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. This will take time to be fully operational: a transitional and testing period is scheduled in 2013 for selected countries, hopefully giving priority to the underfunded programs. In 2014, the new funding mechanism (NFM) should have been tested and ready to be implemented.
One could complain about the length of the delivery process, but it is complex, taking into account so many stakeholders’ points of view; hence, zeGOgroup is welcoming this new way of serving the countries in need for two sets of reasons:
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Some linked to the revival of the Global Fund founding principles:
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The principle of additionality of Global Fund money is highlighted, pushing recipient countries to more responsibilities and transparency over their own health budget.
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In order to successfully implement the NFM, the principle of partnership must become a corner stone of this process. This will require increased harmonization and better alignment of funding at the donor’s level, and it will also require specific technical support at the level of multilateral stakeholders. For UNAIDS, Roll back Malaria, Stop TB and WHO, it is the chance of a lifetime to deliver the much needed support for countries to build their “investment case”.
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In regard to ownership, since the Global Fund will align its funding with country financial cycles, there should be more consistency, at field level, for implementers.
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Others due to lessons learned after 10 years of existence:
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The Global Fund found a good compromise between a demand driven scheme and a much needed, more predictable one which led to the construction of countries bands (i.e. distributing all recipient countries in four different subgroups with an indicative pre- allocation of funds between diseases, bands, and countries within a band).
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The clear prioritization of countries’ needs should also support the prioritization of program funding away from dangerous funding gaps. If there is a surplus of funds, then unfunded demands will be awarded additional priority programs.
However, it could happen that recipient’ countries set aside their own civil societies and by the way their most at risk populations. The indicative funding could also be a double edged sword allowing governments to cover their own funding needs and letting their NGOs unfunded or putting them so low on their funding priorities that money will never reach them.