Global fund pegs future grants to clear country TB interventions
Source: Africa Science News Service
Written by Henry Neondo
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
All applicants for Global Fund grants should now include robust tuberculosis interventions in their HIV/AIDS proposals and HIV/AIDS interventions in their tuberculosis proposals, the Board of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as an outcome of its Eighteenth Board Meeting, agreed last Saturday.
According to a Press statement from The Board, with respect to continued funding for tuberculosis or HIV grants, Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) must explain their plans for scale up to universal TB-HIV collaborative services and explicitly articulate what TB-HIV activities, funding, and indicators will be included in each proposal.
The decision, said the Board, aims at massive scale-up of the actions needed to fully implement the Stop TB Strategy and the Global Plan to Stop TB.
At a time when we are facing ever greater threats that recent progress on TB could be reversed, the Global Fund Board has made a strong and compelling statement about the need for prompt and dedicated action,” said Dr Marcos Espinal, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership.
Noting the upcoming Ministerial meeting on multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) in Beijing, the Board urged bold proposals be submitted to support MDR-TB and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) plans and that countries make use of budget and planning flexibilities to ensure programs utilize emerging technologies.
According to the Board, a successful response must include a major scale up of drug susceptibility testing for all people suspected of having drug-resistant tuberculosis and effective treatment of these cases.
The Board urges applicants to massively scale up laboratory capacity and community-based management of MDR-TB and XDR-TB cases.Applicants should demonstrate that they have sufficient capacity in these areas or show their plans for building it. The Board urged countries to analyze their individual gaps and submit ambitious proposals aimed at achieving major and rapid expansion of case detection with high cure rates, universal coverage of TB-HIV collaborative services.
It further called for scale-up of laboratory and care capacities to expand DOTS; and at addressing MDR- and XDR-TB and strengthening monitoring and evaluation and surveillance systems.
The Board also urges CCMs and Principal Recipients to take advantage of the flexibility offered in Global Fund financing and, if appropriate, to consider revising budgets for existing and new grants and for Phase 2 requests.
Global Plan to Stop TB estimates that US$ 5.3 billion will be required in 2009, but only US$2.7 billion are available.
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