Health Systems

ABSTRACT The sixth Global Fund Partnership Forum brough together stakeholders from around the world from government, communities, civil society and other partners to contribute towards the development of the Global Fund’s post-2022 Strategy. This fourth article in our series Voices of the People outlines the discussions and recommendations of the African Constituencies and their top priorities for the next Strategy.

ABSTRACT Access to medicines and quality health products to ensure healthy populations is a global issue. As 60% of the Global Fund’s financial resources are earmarked for health products, managing the supply chain is crucial given the increase in demand (the scaling-up of ARV treatments, changes in treatment directives, new diagnostic technologies and a growing number of treatment centers). This will necessarily involve reforming the supply chain, aligning partners with a common roadmap, and government leadership in developing countries, say senior experts from the Centre Humanitaire des Métiers de la Pharmacie.

ABSTRACT The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the Global Fund structures, policies and processes for the management of investments in Resilient and Sustainable Systems for Health, and the monitoring framework for these investments, need significant improvement; however, the risk mitigation measures for RSSH activities are partially effective, according to the OIG’s ratings.

ABSTRACT Among the grants approved by the Global Fund Board on 21 December 2018 were two multi-country grants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and one in West and Central Africa. An EECA TB grant was designed to improve early drug-resistant TB case detection and treatment outcomes. Another grant will support a network of supranational TB reference laboratories in the WCA. The third grant targets HIV-related key populations in the EECA.

ABSTRACT At the dawn of the CCM evolution project’s in-country activities, the Global Fund's CCM hub organized a workshop in Morocco where consultants, who will support countries participating in the pilot, were oriented on the project’s objectives, approaches as well as roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders.

ABSTRACT The Global Fund’s Executive Director spelled out plainly, in different sessions at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, the need for the governments of implementing countries, and the private sector, to step up their contributions to the HIV response – and towards reaching UHC. He also advocated for an increase in global health’s share of development assistance.

ABSTRACT The Global Fund has made considerable progress in many areas, the Office of the Inspector General says in its 2017 annual report, and has reached a point where many of the remaining challenges are beyond the ability of the Fund, acting alone, to resolve. Supply chain issues and quality of services top the list of challenges.

ABSTRACT “Exchange for Change” is the title of two workshops designed to explore common bottlenecks in implementing Global Fund–financed health programs and to design novel solutions to address them. The workshops, in Malawi and Burkina Faso, were organized by the global GIZ program BACKUP Health. Communications, transparency and accountability were recurring themes of the workshops.

ABSTRACT Political instability and continuing economic problems have created a complex environment for programming in Burundi. Malaria and TB/HIV grants recently approved by the Global Fund Board are facing numerous challenges. This article summarizes the comments of the Technical Review Panel and the Grant Approvals Committee when it reviewed Burundi’s funding requests.

ABSTRACT Despite facing substantial economic challenges, Zambia has successfully scaled up interventions across all three diseases, concluded an audit of Global Fund conducted by the Office of the Inspector General. However, issues concerning the capacity of health workers and the capacity of diagnostic systems have negatively impacted service delivery, the OIG found, and there have been delays in implementing program activities. Finally, Zambia’s health systems operating with obsolete infrastructures struggle to cope with the rapid increase of volumes caused by program scale-up.