U.S. support for Global Fund may be 'America's greatest global health legacy'

"This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world's most powerful tool in the fight against the three pandemics," Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images, Inc., writes in this post in the Huffington Post Blog, adding, "Since 2002, the Global Fund has saved and improved millions of lives." Klein notes the Board of the Global Fund convened in Geneva, Switzerland, for its 26th meeting last week, where Board members "discussed progress to date on the current transformation of the Global Fund from emergency response to long-term sustainability."

"This is being accomplished chiefly through the Consolidated Transformation Plan, a roadmap for executing the recommendations of an independent high-level panel that reviewed the Global Fund's practices from top to bottom last year," he writes, adding, "The Global Fund has moved swiftly to implement these recommendations, which seek to strengthen grants management, focus on the countries with the highest burden of disease, reform the Global Fund's governance structure and enhance its gold standard transparency and accountability measures." Klein discusses funding for the Global Fund through U.S. foreign aid and concludes, "The Global Fund started a decade ago as an incredibly effective emergency response to the crises of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. ... With PEPFAR and other bilateral partners, U.S. support for the Global Fund can be America's greatest global health legacy" (5/15).