GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Global Fund will be looking for a new communications director, with Jon Lidén announcing his departure 13 February, reports IP Watch. Lidén had held the post for nearly 10 years, almost since the organization was created. The Global Fund is expected to have $10 billion to disburse worldwide for the three-year 2011-2013 period to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis,
The group has been under pressure for the past year, with some funding withdrawn and other funding commitments delayed after US media accusations of fraud that have been hotly debated. Lidén is quoted by IP Watch as saying in a memo to staff that he and the new general manager, Gabriel Jaramillo, have agreed “that for the new direction the communications work should be taking, the organization is best served by finding a new person to lead this work.
Jaramillo replaces the departing executive director, Michel Kazatchkine, who leaves in mid-March (IPW, Public Health, 25 January 2012) amid rumours that the United States was behind the change, according to IP Watch.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Global Fund, which disburses monies from other organizations to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, is celebrating its 10th birthday this week with a special gift: the Bill Gates Foundation, which gave $650 million during the Fund’s first decade, has just announced it is giving an additional $750m.
The news, announced by Gates at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, came a day after the Global Fund announced that Columbian Gabriel Jaramillo has been appointed general manager, a new position “intended to oversee a process of transformation as it accelerates the fight against the three pandemics by focusing on its management of risk and grants.” Jaramillo is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Sovereign Bank and he has more than 35 years in executive positions in the financial industry.
The gift is larger than the promised cash, for it is helping breath new life into an organization that went on the defense last year after corruption, which the Fund itself had uncovered and was investigating, was brought into the limelight by US media, notably the Associated Press, which is owned by US newspapers and is widely distributed there.
Jaramillo, although in a new position, replaces Michel Kazatchkine, executive director, who announced his retirement this week. The new general manager reports to the board and has full executive responsibility for the Global Fund.
Gates, in Davos, praised the group’s track record and commitment to improved oversight, noting that problems with misuse of funds happens if you’re doing business in Africa.
His remarks refer to changes that are the result of a 2011 review by what is called the High-Level, Independent Panel assigned to look at financial controls and oversights. It was headed by former US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Botswana’s former President Festus Mogae. The board in November approved a “transformation” plan “to address the findings of the Panel, along with a new, ambitious, four-year strategy and decided to appoint a General Manager to oversee this transformation”.
The panel “recommended changes to risk-management, governance and oversight to ensure the institution manages donor resources as efficiently and safely as possible”, the Fund says in a statement.
The Guardian notes in its report on the changing of the guard that “the shock of the corruption revelations, which were pounced on by the US right, and the subsequent loss of confidence in the Fund – which led some donors to suspend payments – was an alarm call. . . What has happened now is a result of a determination that the Fund must not fail. An overhaul is underway, to ensure not just transparency but greater efficiency.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Netherlands Wednesday threw its support soundly behind Geneva-based Global Fund, agreeing to invest €163.5 million to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. Perhaps more critically, the Dutch government made the announcement with a firm message of support for the organization’s financial credibility.
The Global Fund suffered a sharp if possibly temporary reduction in funding this year following a widely distributed US news agency report in January that mistakenly accused the fund of not managing money properly.
The report focused on alleged fraud cases and implied mismanagement, but used information the Global Fund itself had published, following internal investigations, as part of its policy of transparency. Several governments withdrew their funding pledges as a result, saying they needed time to review the situation, putting the Global Fund’s operations into a precarious situation.
Dutch Minister for European and International Affairs Ben Knapen underscored Dutch support in the wake of the Geneva group’s funding crisis, in announcing the agreement through the Dutch Foreign Ministry:
Tuberculosis in Nigeria is reaching the crisis stage, with an epidemic of drug-resistant cases threatening, say medical sources in Nigeria, according to allAfrica. Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) cases are rapidly on the rise and could cause the “”imminent and total collapse of the efficacy of the available first-line drugs for TB treatment”. First-line drugs are less costly and treatment of TB that responds generally takes six months while MDR-TB takes 18-24 months to treat, with six of those months in hospital, say Nigerian doctors, and the drugs needed to treat the disease are far more costly.
Nigeria has one of the world’s highest rates of TB, estimated at 450,000 new cases a year, and a high percentage go undetected: only 94,000 cases were detected in 2010. MDR-TB develops most often as the result of untreated or poorly managed cases of TB.
Links to other sites: The Global Fund, USAid, WHO
Women volunteers gather in Zambia - Photo UN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Amid concerns of corruption in the management of public health grants in Zambia, the Geneva-based Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, has stopped disbursing funds to the country’s Ministry of Health.
On a written statement, the Global Fund confirmed it had stopped disbursing funds to Zambia since August 2009 after finding “evidence of expenditures that could not be accounted for.”
In order not to disrupt services, the Global Fund channeled $17 million through other venues, and soon, the UN Development Programme, UNDP, will take over the Ministry of Health’s grants.
An additional $180 million in grants implemented by civil society organizations in Zambia are not affected by the freeze.
New campaign calls for continued action
Indigenous people in Colombia live in areas of high risk of malaria - Photo Jared Bloch
[Video] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A new campaign by the Global Fund against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Born HIV-free, seeks to breath new life into the fight against the three diseases that each year claim hundreds of thousands of lives.
The new push is part of a worldwide effort to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) outlined by the international community in 2000.
The Geneva-based Global Fund, backed by private funders and by the G8, has distributed $19.3 billion in 144 countries to support prevention, treatment and care programs against AIDS, TB and malaria. There is still much more that needs to be done to eradicate them, the group argues. Its effort to reinvigorate the fight against these diseases comes as world health experts gather in Geneva 17-21 May for the World Health Organization assembly.
Title: Luncheon, The Global Fund
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Prof. Michel Kazatchkine
ch Executive Director – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Date: 2010-05-06
Allison Wilbur, quilter, Douglas Griffiths of the US Mission in Geneva and Barbara Lee, US House of Representatives, at exhibit opening 12 November
Dawn Maria Piasta from Canada with her quilt, Geneva Quilt Challenge at the UN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A warming exhibit, in every sense, has opened at the UN Palais building in Geneva, with a display of American quilts made specially to promote the work of Geneva-based Global Fund for Malaria, Aids and Tuberculosis. The show, “Making a healthier world for our children”, is organized by Geneva’s US Mission to coincide with the annual United Nations Women’s Guild fundraising bazaar, which pulls in thousands of visitors.
One-third of African babies could avoid becoming ill with malaria with a new treatment method against the disease, according to the authors of a study published 17 September in the Lancet. By giving young uninfected children doses of the traditional anti-malarial drugs on a regular, but not continuous basis, the children build up their immunity to the disease, and its resistance to the drugs decreases, the study finds.
Malaria causes almost one million deaths a year world-wide, according to Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, mostly among children under the age of five. Based on findings involving almost 8,000 children in four countries in Africa, the research finds that if extended to all of Africa, some six million cases of malaria could be prevented.
Between 350m and 500m people are infected every year, mostly in the world’s poorest countries. The situation is aggravated by deteriorating health systems, war and climate change. Traditional drugs have been used for almost 30 years and the disease is becoming increasingly resistant to them, reducing their effectiveness.
Left to right: Rifat Atun, The Global Fund; George Alleyne, Caribbean Commission on Health and Development, Dr Ala Alwan, WHO; Marie-Pierre Lloyd, Seychelles; Leslie Ramsammy, Guyana (click on image to view larger)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swine flu may be in the headlines, but non-communicable diseases (NCDs), especially in developing countries, were in the corridors and meeting rooms as the World Health Assembly, the global body of the World Health Organization (WHO), held its annual meeting in Geneva 17-22 May. NCDs are estimated to reduce gross domestic product by up to five percent in many low- and middle-income countries, where four out of five of the 35 million deaths a year from NCDs occur. A growing chorus of voices is arguing that these diseases should become part of the health package of the UN Millennium Development Goals which countries have signed a compact to meet by 2015.
The figures were put forward this week by three key international health groups who represent 730 member health care organizations which are calling for an “immediate and substantial increase in financing” for these diseases: the International Diabetes Federation, International Union Against Cancer and World Heart Federation.
