Board wants to triple number of lives saved and number of new infections averted by 2016

No consensus on whether to alter the Global Fund’s mandate

The Global Fund Board says that the Fund’s new strategic plan should have “bold, ambitious and measurable objectives” – including tripling the number of lives saved and the number of infections averted between 2011 and 2016. This information is contained in a report prepared by Dr. Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, Chair of the board, on the board’s recent retreat, which was held prior to its regular meeting in December 2010 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In addition to the objectives related to lives saved and infections averted, the board said that the Global Fund needs to do more to leverage the impact of its investments, particularly with respect to health gains for women and children; to increase efforts to maximise value for money; to increase efforts to ensure protection of human rights and access to prevention, treatment, care and support for all, including the poorest and most marginalised populations; and to increase efforts to ensure the sustainability of programmes to which the Global Fund is currently contributing.

One area where the board failed to reach a consensus at the retreat concerns the mandate of the Global Fund. There were divergent perspectives on whether the objectives related to the number of lives saved and infections averted should be phrased in a way that allow the Global Fund to progressively expand its mandate. According to the report,

“While some of the participants strongly felt that the objectives of the new strategy should clearly reflect an intention to expand the mandate, others felt that it was not yet the right time to do so, primarily because in the current resource-constrained environment this could lead to a partially unfunded mandate, but also because efforts to make the Global Fund even more effective and efficient need to progress further.”

Board members agreed that this issue would have to be resolved at another time.

The timetable for the development of the new strategic plan is as follows:

• a first draft of a strategy framework will be ready for discussion at the 23^rd board meeting in May 2011;
• discussions will take place at the partnership forum scheduled for June 2011;
• a broad consultation process will be launched around the same time; and
• the board will approve the plan by the 24^th board meeting at the end of 2011.

In his report, the Chair said that participants at the retreat “reflected on our major successes to date, but also on the many challenges we face today…. There was consensus that we have done well and that the challenge now is to do even better.”

The information for this article was taken from “Board Chair’s Summary – Board Retreat: December 10-11, 2010,” which may be posted soon at www.theglobalfund.org/en/board/meetings/twentysecond/documents.