Financing for HIV

Ensuring sustained political and financial support for the Global Fund to fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria is one of SAA's key priorities.

Key donor countries' changes in priorites, corruption cases of Global Fund money in the media and decreasing interest in targeting specific diseases in favour of strengthening overall health systems has led to a challenging political environment to protect the Global Fund model and ensure it is adequately funded. In addition, discussions to expand the mandate of the Global Fund to cover maternal and child health (MDG 4 and 5) in addition to MDG 6 are ongoing.

The recent Third Voluntary Replenishment meeting that took place in New York on 4–5 October 2010 has been a general disappointment in terms of pledges made, and any expansion of the Global Fund mandate will be dependent on the availability of adequate funding. At the same time, it is essential that in response to current donor trends that include country ownership, new aid coordination mechanisms (such as the IHP+ and the joint Health Systems Funding Platform of the Global Fund, GAVI and the World Bank) and direct budget support to governments, the Global Fund model of meaningful civil society involvement and performance based funding is protected and promoted. 

SAA works also to promote a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) that would channel additional resources for reaching the health MDGs.