Global Fund donors 'earmark' funds for capacity-building, Fund's general manager says

Gabriel Jaramillo, the general manager of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said in an interview on Friday that "quite a few donors" to the fund "have earmarked portions of their donations to us, their contributions, to capacity-building," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. According to the AP, the Global Fund "is increasingly being forced to devote a portion of its donations to improving its own spending controls rather than disease-fighting," the news service writes. "France, whose nearly $2.9 billion in donations have made it the fund's second-largest contributor after the U.S., will sign a new pledging agreement this month requiring that five percent of its money go to tighten financial accountability among grant recipients, he said," the AP writes.

Jaramillo on Thursday "announced that Germany had contributed 50 million euro ($65 million), the first quarter of what it pledged for this year," the AP notes (3/9). According to a Global Fund press release, the "contribution was a clear endorsement of new measures to improve financial oversight and management" (3/8). "Jaramillo said he was committed ... to preserving the fund's transparency -- it publicly posts audits and investigative reports from the inspector general -- despite the potential for giving bad news to donors," the AP adds (3/9).