Funding Bill Brieger | 28 Aug 2009 02:52 am
A Long Gestation – Global Fund Grant Signing
Round 8 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria concluded with the award of 28 country grants for malaria back in November 2008. Nine months later much of the $1,506,627,922 designated for Phase 1 of these grants remains in the bank since only six of the 28 recipients have signed the grant (see grant negotiation/signing in GFATM lifecycle below).
The six whose gestation was less than the traditional human period of nine months include Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Swaziland. These do count for 36.5% of the grand total, but some high burden countries are still gestating, even though help is available, as seen below:
- Afghanistan
- Brazil
- Central African republic
- Colombia
- Comoros
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Congo
- Cote d’Ivoire
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- Ghana
- Haiti
- Indonesia
- Korea DPRK
- Kyrgyz Republic
- Papua New Guinea
- Sri Lanka
- Tajikistan
- Tanzania
- Uzbekistan
- Zanzibar (Tanzania)
- Zimbabwe
With pressure on for achieving universal coverage of malaria interventions prior to reaching the 2010 Roll Back Malaria targets, one would think countries would be more anxious to get their hands on this crucial malaria funding. This money is unfortunately not gathering interest for the recipient countries while they wile away the time. Lets hope their grant signing gestation period does not extend into 2010, as that would be a sad delivery.