The cash-strapped Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria fell under the spotlight in July, when ministers from 14 countries met in Paris, France, to address the fund's financial woes. The fund, which has committed US $1.5 billion to programmes in 92 countries in the last 18 months, faces a lack of money for proposals waiting to be funded in October.
Equity in Health
Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010
Lozano R, Naghavi M, Foreman K, Lim S, Shibuya K, Aboyans V et al: The Lancet 380 (9859): 2095–2128, 15 December 2012
In the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, researchers aimed to estimate annual deaths for the world and 21 regions between 1980 and 2010 for 235 causes, separately by age and sex. They collected data on causes of death for 187 countries from 1980 to 2010 from vital registration, verbal autopsy, mortality surveillance, censuses, surveys, hospitals, police records, and mortuaries. Findings revealed a broad shift from communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional causes towards non-communicable diseases, which appears to be driven by population growth, increased average age of the world's population, and largely decreasing age-specific, sex-specific, and cause-specific death rates. Nevertheless, communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional causes remain the dominant causes of years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs) in sub-Saharan Africa. Overlaid on this general pattern of the epidemiological transition, marked regional variation exists in many causes, such as interpersonal violence, suicide, liver cancer, diabetes, cirrhosis, Chagas disease, African trypanosomiasis, melanoma, and others. Regional heterogeneity highlights the importance of sound epidemiological assessments of the causes of death on a regular basis.
GLOBAL COALITION AIMS TO EXPAND ACCESS TO HIV/AIDS TREATMENT
A new international coalition - the International HIV Treatment Access Coalition (ITAC) - has been launched to boost efforts to provide access to antiretroviral drugs to the growing number of people with HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries who need them. According to WHO/UNAIDS estimates presented in a report launched by the Coalition, millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries face death within the coming years unless they can access these life-saving medicines.
Global Equity Gauge Alliance
Ntuli A: Promotion and Education XIV (2): 107-108, 2007
The lack of attention to equity in health, health care and determinants of health is a burden to the attainment of good health in many countries. With this underlying problem as a basis, a series of meetings took place between 1999 and 2000, culminating in the creation of the Global Equity Gauge Alliance (GEGA). GEGA is an international network of groups in developing countries, mainly Asia, AFrica, and Latin America, which develop projects designed to confront and mitigate inequities in health, known as Equity Gauges. Equity Gauges aim to contribute towards the sustained decline in inequities in both the broad sociopolitical determinants of health, as well as inequities in health system. Their approach is based on three broad spheres of action, known as "pillars". Through a series of examples from local or national level gauges, this paper showcases their work promoting the interaction between research and evidence-based policy formulation and implementation, and the interaction between the community and policy makers.
Global Equity Gauge Alliance: Reflections on Early Experiences
The paper traces the evolution and working of the Global Equity Gauge Alliance (GEGA) and its efforts to promote health equity. GEGA places health equity squarely within a larger framework of social justice, linking findings on socioeconomic and health inequalities with differentials in power, wealth, and prestige in society.
Global evidence on inequities in rural health protection: New data on rural deficits in health coverage for 174 countries
Scheil-Adlung X: International Labour Office, ESS Document No. 47, Geneva, 2015
While inequities in health protection are increasingly recognized as an important issue in current policy debates on universal health coverage (UHC) and in the post-2015 agenda, the rural/urban divide is largely ignored. This paper presents global estimates on rural/urban disparities in access to health-care services. The report uses proxy indicators to assess key dimensions of coverage and access involving the core principles of universality and equity. Based on the results of the estimates, policy options are discussed to close the gaps in a multi-sectoral approach addressing issues and their root causes both within and beyond the health sector.
Global Fund Names Technical Review Panel to Review Funding Proposals
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a new initiative to combat the epidemics that kill six million people each year, today [11 March] announced the appointment of an international panel of experts that will review all grant proposals and make recommendations to the Board for funding.
global fund needs billions more
After an initial burst of high-profile donations and pledges, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria is now running low on funds necessary to finance programmes against the epidemics which kill an estimated 16 000 people per day. A board meeting said the fund would need an additional US$2 billion next year, and an additional $4.6 billion in 2004 as a result of the growing capacity of countries to absorb the resources and expand effective programmes.
Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria
First Meeting of the Transitional Working Group
The Transitional Working Group (TWG) to establish a new Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, convened for the first time on Thursday and Friday (10/11-12) in Brussels. The TWG agreed on the name of the Fund, conceived as a financial entity for leveraging resources to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria for countries and groups in the greatest need. The Fund will support programs for strengthening health systems and country-level partnerships involving governments, the private sector, and civil society. In addition, the Fund will support the purchase of critical health products, such as bed-nets, condoms, antiretroviral drugs, anti-TB and anti-malarial drugs, on the basis of an independent review of local realities.
Further details: /newsletter/id/28922
Contact: melanie.zipperer@tss-twg.be
Global health approaches must evolve
Akukwe C: African Crisis, June 2010
According to this article, Africa faces numerous health challenges on the ground, such as lack of skilled health workers and poor social determinants of health, as well as several challenges originating from the global health arena. In global health, idealists who believe that money and technical assistance must be available in sufficient quantities to meet demand are pitted against policy makers who are working with finite resources and competing priorities. The author identifies lack of co-ordination of policies and programmes in Africa as another major obstacle to achieving universal health coverage. In addition, he argues that global health continues to operate on a financing mechanism that strengthens the hand of donor organisations at the expense of host nations and their priorities. Measuring the impact of global health programmes is technically difficult and a massive data gap exists. The author notes lack of participation by target populations in global health initiatives with regard to conceptualisation and design of projects, and their knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of target populations are also seldom included, especially the voices of poor and underserved communities. In Africa and other parts of the developing world, the author argues that global health is evolving from traditional concerns about the spread of infectious diseases to concerns about human security and dignity.