Based on advice from the TRP, the Board divided eligible Round 9 proposals into five Categories, as follows:

• Category 1: Approved proposals requiring no or minor clarifications, which need to be provided within 8 weeks and then given a final approval by the TRP Chair and/or Vice-Chair.
• Category 2: Proposals that are approved in principle, subject to the required clarifications being provided within a limited timeframe (8 weeks for the applicant to provide an initial detailed response to the TRP queries, and a further 3 months to obtain the final TRP approval should further clarifications be requested). The TRP Chair and Vice-Chair need to give final approval.
• Category 2B: Proposals that are treated as those in Category 2, but are regarded as being relatively weak, on grounds of technical merit and/or issues of feasibility and likelihood of effective implementation.
• Category 3: Proposals not approved in their present form, though applicants are encouraged to resubmit in Round 10 following major revision.
• Category 4: Proposals that are rejected, with applicants not encouraged to resubmit in any similar form.

The Board approved "in principle" all proposals in Categories 1, 2 and 2B. However, some of the approvals are immediate and some are delayed, depending on future availability of funds. The prioritization is handled as follows:

• Category 1 and Category 2 proposals are approved immediately.
• Each country submitting a proposal rated Category 2B is assigned a disease burden index of 4 or 1 according to whether the disease burden is "very high" or not "very high". And each such country is assigned a poverty index of 4, 2 or 0 according to whether the country is low income, lower-middle income, or upper-middle income. The sum of these two indexes creates the Composite Index, whose value is therefore between 8 and 1. The higher the country's Composite Index, the sooner its Category 2B proposal will be approved.
• Category 2B proposals will be approved in the following order, as pledges by donors to the Fund become available in the course of 2009-2010:
  1. Category 2B, Composite Index 8
  2. Category 2B, Composite Index 6
  3. Category 2B, Composite Index 5
  4. Category 2B, Composite Index 4
  5. Category 2B, Composite Index 3

The number of Round 9 grants per Category and Composite Index are as follows: Table 5: Round 9 results by Category and Composite Index Round 9 results by applicant were as in Tables 6 and 7, below. Table 6: Round 9 Results, by Country Note that for each grant, the final amount that will be approved will be on average at least 10% lower than the amount requested for years 1-2, and potentially up to 25% lower for years 3-5. * Note that for Kenya TB, Senegal HIV, Serbia TB and Vietnam HIV, the amount requested is less than was in the proposal because the TRP removed certain elements from the proposal. Also for China TB the recommended amount was adjusted for other technical reasons. Table 7: Round 9 results for regional applicants