November’s Board meeting is upon us

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Aidspan

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Article Number: 1

This issue of the Global Fund Observer is a run up to next weeks’ Board meeting. We take a first look at the meeting’s agenda and in anticipation of the meeting we cover some topics of particular interest, including the Technical Review Panel's observations on the three 2023 Windows, malaria and climate change, and Board representation. We also look at an Office of the Inspector General audit of grants in Burundi.

Dear readers

 

The past two issues of the Global Fund Observer have focused on the work of the three Committees (Strategy, Audit & Finance and Ethics & Governance) as they prepared for next week’s Board meeting. If you have read those issues, you’ll already be well informed about some of the key topics coming up for discussion at the Board meeting to be held from 14 to 16 November.

 

In this special pre-Board issue, we start by informing you about the Board agenda (Next week the Global Fund’s Board will hold its 50th meeting) so that you can pick and choose the topics of most interest to you – as we will report on many of them in next week’s GFO Board Special to be published when the Board  meeting has closed.

 

Our third article, Global Fund Technical Review Panel observations on funding requests from Windows 1, 2 and 3,  is based on a presentation to the World Health Organization Joint Working Group and synthesizes the findings and recommendations of the TRP from Grant Cycle 7’s three funding cycle Windows in 2023. We have previously carried many articles on this topic regarding the first two Windows but this time we see for the first time the preliminary feedback on the third Window. This is an interesting read to set the scene for the forthcoming discussions on TRP Matters at next week’s Board meeting.

 

We continue to explore the relationship of the Global Fund with other global health initiatives (GHIs) in our next article, Possible scope for aligning Gavi and Global Fund Co-financing Transition, and Sustainability Policies. You may remember that the last GFO carried an article on Reimagining the future of GHIs which looks at the Global Health Initiatives project reported on in GFO 434 (you can read about this here).

 

This is followed by a discussion on malaria based on Strategy Committee discussions and, again, to set the scene for Board discussion on malaria, and in particular its session on Climate and Health (Redefining strategies to address the multifaceted battle against malaria.

 

Of particular relevance to next week’s Board meeting is our article on Board representation (How to improve Global Fund governance). The Africa region receives over 70% of Global Fund resources yet has only two representatives on the Board, the same number as other regions which receive far fewer resources. Africa argues that this is an imbalance and an increased representation of African nations to better reflect the financial divide would ultimately result in improved governance of Global Fund monies.

 

Finally, we end with a summary of another report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), this time on Burundi (OIG report on Burundi).

 

Next week we will publish our Special Board issue with the most up-to-date news and discussions from the Board meeting. Look out for it in your inboxes on Thursday or Friday next week!

 

If you like the GFO and find it relevant to your work, please encourage your colleagues to subscribe!

 

Don’t forget: if you are aware of an interesting development relevant to disease programmes or health systems and that you feel is worthy of global discussion, do let us know together with the name of a person prepared to write about this (or we might even do it ourselves if you ask us nicely!). Suggestions and comments can be sent to us, Ida Hakizinka or Arlette Campbell White in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish at ida.hakizinka@aidspan.org and/or acampbell.white@aidspan.org.

 

The Aidspan Editorial Team