Editorial : Audit, Quality Check, Test, Report & The Worlds They Hold Like Women Do Every Day but Who’s Replenishing Them?!

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Aidspan

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Article Number: 1

Our first March newsletter begins a new section with interviews of women working in the health sector to reiterate that every day is Women’s Day! Since we are in the thick of upcoming replenishments of global multilateral institutions, we have a guest article on it. We have a focus on Africa with articles on the common challenges they face as highlighted by four country audits of the Office of the Inspector General of the Global Fund and news on Africa’s malaria progress. We also pick holes in the quality checks of insecticide-treated nets and comment on the importance of diagnostics in ending tuberculosis.

We celebrate Women’s Day with an interview with Dr. Madiarra Coulibaly, Executive Director, Alliance Cote d’Ivoire. She holds a doctorate in medicine, specialist in public health and community medicine. She has carried out additional training in leadership, management, gender and development, gender and organizational change, etc. She has 21 years of professional experience in managing national and regional health and development projects. The interview is translated from our French counterpart Observateur du Fonds Mondial (OFM).

 

Our guest columnists are Katja Roll and Christoph Benn, from the Joep Lange Institute, Center for Global Health Diplomacy. As global health multilateral institutions enter their replenishment cycles the authors provide an incisive perspective on what needs to be done so as to reach out to all interests without compromising on the mission of tackling global health threats. It focuses on the 8th Grant Cycle of the Global Fund and offers suggestions on the way forward.

 

We delve into the importance of diagnostics and the role of rapid molecular diagnostics, which have become the go-to tool for detecting drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis and what this means for the global struggle to end tuberculosis.

 

Our focus on Africa begins with the Office of the Inspector General’s audits of the Global Fund’s grants to Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Uganda and the common challenges these countries face. Since it’s a lot of ground to cover, we have two articles on the subject. In one article, we speak of the extensive low utilization of key health interventions, issues with data quality and management, and challenges in procurement and supply chain management while in the other, we look at financial limitations, policy and legal obstacles, and deficiencies in capacity building.

 

Then comes a write-up on the impact of insecticide-treated bed nets in malaria interventions and what happens when their quality becomes suspect. We examine the news around specific cases of PermaNet 2.0, Dawaplus 2.0 and Net Protect to analyse what is going wrong and where and highlight the repeated failure of global funders and health institutions in addressing the problem in a timely fashion.

 

We return to our focus on Africa, in reporting on the African Union Malaria Progress Report 2023, produced by the African Union Commission, the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership for Malaria Elimination.

 

If you like what you read, do spread the word around and ask others to subscribe!

 

And we’re waiting for you to fill us in on what you want and what you can write for us!

Any thoughts about which aspect in the global health initiative sector you’d like to see covered in our newsletter are always welcome and we’d really appreciate suggestions on who can pen an article on it! Anyone who wishes to voluntarily contribute as a guest columnist and provide an incisive analysis or first-person account of what is happening at micro or macro levels in the field of global health interventions is also welcome. Any feedback and suggestions in French, Spanish, English can be sent to Ida Hakizinka ida.hakizinka@aidspan.org and/or in English to madhuri@aidspan.org

Happy Women’s Day!