In April 2010, the Global Fund Board approved six proposals in Wave 8 of the Rolling Continuation Channel (RCC) funding stream, representing costs of up to $151 million over three years. Of the six proposals, four were for HIV and two were for malaria. All approvals are conditional on the applicant responding satisfactorily to clarifications requested by the Technical Review Panel (TRP).

This is the last full wave of funding for the RCC, which is being discontinued.

As is its custom, the Board approved the TRP funding recommendations in block - i.e., without debating the merits of individual proposals. As a result of cost-cutting measures adopted at the November 2009 Board meeting, the Board formally approved funding only for the first two years of each proposal; funding for the third year will be approved later if there are sufficient funds available. The costs for the first two years of all approved proposals is $96 million.

The TRP reviewed 11 proposals in all, which means that the success rate was 55 percent, which is about the same as the success rate in Wave 7 and a little lower than the average success rate for the six previous waves.

All of the proposals were from CCMs, except for one which was from a Sub-CCM in South Africa. Six of the 11 proposals were re-submissions of unsuccessful proposals from Waves 6 and 7; four of the re-submissions were approved. The two re-submitted proposals that were not approved were an HIV proposal from Tanzania and a malaria proposal from Suriname. The TRP rated both proposals Category 3B, which means that the applicants are strongly encouraged to re-submit their proposals through the rounds-based channel, but only after major revisions.

(Tanzania submitted two HIV proposals: the resubmission mentioned above, plus a new Wave 8 proposal. Neither was recommended for funding.)

Only two of the five new proposals were approved. The other three proposals were rated Category 3A by the TRP, meaning that the applicants are strongly encouraged to re-submit these proposals in the final resubmission wave of the RCC, taking into account the issues raised by the TRP.

Table 1 summarises the results for the first eight waves of funding. Table 2 provides the results for Wave 8, by country.

Table 1: RCC applications and results - Waves 1-8

Table 2: Wave 8 RCC results by country

There will be one final "catch all" RCC window later in 2010 for re-submissions from Waves 7 and 8. No new submissions will be accepted.

The "Report of the Technical Review Panel and the Secretariat on Wave 8 Rolling Continuation Channel Proposals" is available (in English only) at www.theglobalfund.org/en/trp/reports/.