Today, during the first day of its sixteenth board meeting held in Kunming, China, the Global Fund board approved 73 Round 7 grants that will cost $1,119 million over the first two years and $2,762 m. over five years. (For a complete list of approved and non-approved proposals, see below.) As a result of recent new pledges, the Fund has sufficient money to pay for all grants that were recommended by the Technical Review Panel.

Round 7 applicants to the Global Fund submitted fewer, but bigger and better, proposals than applicants in all previous rounds.

The two-year cost of approved Round 7 grants - $1,119 million over two years - is a record amount. In the six previous rounds, the two-year cost of approved grants ranged from $571 million to $968 million.

The percentage of proposals recommended for approval was also a record - 49%, up from an average of 38% over the previous six rounds. On the other hand, this still means that just over half of all proposals submitted were not approved, despite the facts that there is an enormous need for scaled-up programmes to tackle the three diseases and that there is an increased availability of funding.

The average two-year cost of the proposals recommended for approval in Round 7 was $15 million - again a record, up from an average of $10 million over the previous rounds. On the other hand, the number of eligible proposals submitted in Round 7, at 150, was the lowest ever.

In Round 7, an unusually high 62% of malaria proposals were approved, up from 32% in Round 6. The percentages of HIV/AIDS and TB proposals approved were 41% and 46%, respectively. The success rates by region ranged from 36% in Eastern Europe to 59% in the Middle East, ending the supremacy of the Western Pacific region in the three previous Rounds.

The Board's decisions as to which proposals to approve was, as always, entirely based on the advice it received from the Technical Review Panel (TRP), an independent and non-political body of 34 experts from around the world who serve in their personal capacities. No board members or Secretariat employees are members of the TRP.

The following tables summarize Round 7 results.

Global Fund Proposals, Submitted and Approved, by Round

* "Cost" means the upper ceiling for the budget for Years 1 to 2 (i.e. for Phase 1). Cost does not include proposals approved in Round 7 under the new "Rolling Continuation Channel" option.

Table 2: Disease Component Results by Round

Table 3: Region Results by Round

Table 4: Outcome of Secretariat Screening Panel Review of Eligibility, by Round

Other highlights of Round 7 include the following:

• In Round 7, five approved proposals had five-year budgets in excess of $100 million. These were from Uganda (HIV/AIDS, $267 m., and malaria, $126 m.), Rwanda (HIV/AIDS, $137 m.), Kenya (HIV/AIDS, $132 m.) and Ethiopia (HIV/AIDS, $106 m.). And five non-approved proposals had five-year budgets in excess of $100 million. These were from Nigeria (malaria, $217 m., and HIV/AIDS, $121 m.), Cote d'Ivoire (HIV/AIDS, $129 m.), Ghana (malaria, $115 m.), and Tanzania (HIV/AIDS, $104 m.).
• As always, and as required by the Board, the TRP did not take into account availability of funds when it decided which proposals to recommend for approval.
• The Phase 1 budget breakdown of the approved Round 7 proposals was: health products and health equipment (25%), medicines and pharmaceutical products (13%), training (12%), human resources (10%), procurement and supply management costs (7%), infrastructure and other equipment (7%), M&E (5%), communication materials (5%), planning and admin (4%), living support to clients and target populations (4%), technical assistance (3%), overheads (3%), and other (2%). (In a press release, the Fund stated that nearly 20% of the total approved funding will be contributed to large-scale strengthening of in-country health systems through upgrading infrastructure, strengthening essential procurement and supply management systems, reinforcing human resources, and buying new health equipment.)
• The TRP said in its report to the board that the improvement in the quality of Round 7 malaria proposals (from a 32% approval rate in Round 6 to 62% in Round 7) appears to be largely due to the support applicants received from the Roll Back Malaria Harmonization Working Group and WHO's Global Malaria Programme throughout the Round 7 proposal development process.
• Six proposal components were "screened out" by the Secretariat as ineligible and not even reviewed by the TRP because the CCMs of the countries in question were not in compliance with the Fund's minimum CCM eligibility requirements. These were Brazil (malaria), Republic of Congo (HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria), and Fiji (HIV/AIDS and TB).
• Round 8 will open for applications on 1 March 2008 and close on 1 July 2008. Drawing on Round 7 outcomes, the Fund is anticipating a significant increase in demand for resources in that Round.