Recognizing Global Fund's integration of reproductive health into focus on AIDS, TB, malaria

Noting the successes of the first 10 years of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as well as the funding challenges it faces moving forward, Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, vice president of advocacy at Population Action International, writes in an opinion piece in GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog that the Fund "has always upheld the idea that their work contributes to achievement of all of the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)" and "always accepted and considered proposals that include reproductive, maternal, and child health interventions, when countries could demonstrate that they would have an impact on AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria."

"Remarkably, and distressingly, the Global Fund is one of the few donors that will fund reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health and HIV out of the same pot of money" without "bureaucratic restrictions," she writes. Noting the Global Fund is expected this year to develop an "implementation plan for its maternal, newborn, and child health integration strategy," Dunn-Georgiou concludes, "Reproductive and maternal health advocates should be working now to ensure that this commitment to integration becomes a reality. But we should also join together with advocates focused on AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in demanding that donors fulfill (and increase) their commitments to the Global Fund" (2/9).