EECA: Civil society organizations signed an Open Letter addressed to the Global Fund Board pleading to hear their concerns

Earlier this year, the Global Fund started a full roll out of its new funding model. In March 2014 at its Thirty-First Meeting the Global Fund Board approved a new allocation methodology and the funding resources for the 2014 - 2016 allocation period. 24 organizations representing civil society and including communities of people living with HIV, tuberculosis (TB) or Hepatitis C, i.e. key affected populations from Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) and their partner organizations from other regions signed an Open Letter addressed to the Global Fund Board members.

In the Open Letter civil society organizations share their concerns about the application of the new Global Fund approach to resource allocation in terms of the negative impact it is likely to have on harm reduction programming and funding in EECA in 2015 – 2017. We believe it is critical to analyze what consequences the new funding model will have on middle-income countries and its key affected populations in order to draw conclusions for the improvement of certain elements of the model and development of the next Global Fund Strategy.

In the letter it is proposed to intensify collaboration and partnerships between the Global Fund, donor governments, recipient governments, civil societies and communities, particularly in middle-income countries, to plan for and execute a transition to sustainable HIV and TB responses in a responsible way. 

The Board of the Global Fund is pleaded to hear our concerns and to work with us and the communities to develop a strategy to ensure that the transition in the countries of the region happens in a way which will be:

• facilitating the development and execution of implementable roadmaps to sustainable and national government-funded HIV and TB programs, particularly in middle-income countries with concentrated epidemics among key affected populations;
• encouraging recipient governments to take on their responsibility in HIV and TB  financing and providing adequate technical support in the course of the transition to national investments in HIV and TB prevention, treatment and care;
• building advocacy capacity of and empowering our communities to ensure that key affected populations are in no way marginalized and have access to prevention, treatment and care continuum;
• ensuring that each country’s needs will be determined by their situation and not as a “one size fits all” model
• ensuring that Hepatitis C is afforded its rightful place as a threat to people who inject drugs and other key populations.

To read the full text of the Open Letter, please follow this link.

Source: Eurasian Harm Reduction Network