Three diseases, a three-year funding cycle and a Board that approves every grant: the Global Fund

Background

A worldwide partnership against three infectious diseases, the Global Fund works to defeat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and to strengthen health and community systems across more than 100 countries that these diseases hit hardest. It raises and invests more than US$4 billion a year, and calls itself the biggest multilateral funder anywhere of global health grants going to countries of low and middle income, having disbursed over US$73 billion since 2002. Money is raised on a three-year cycle rather than year by year, which the partnership says brings longer term predictability to the fight and to the health systems it supports. Its Board settles the strategy, runs the institution and clears all funding, and its seats are held by donor and implementer governments, non-governmental organisations, the private sector, private foundations and communities affected by the diseases. Countries themselves decide where and how to fight the three diseases, shaping the response to their own political, cultural and epidemiological setting. On its own figures the partnership has saved 72 million lives and cut the combined death rate from the three diseases by 65 per cent. It also reports providing 28% of all international financing for HIV programmes, 80% of that for tuberculosis and 57% of that for malaria. It is among the largest providers of health commodities, and it supports over 120 countries in bringing new health tools to scale at affordable prices.