The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Founded	January 28, 2002 (2002-01-28) (first Board of Directors meeting)
Focus	Accelerating the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics
Location	Geneva, Switzerland
Key people	Peter Sands, (Executive Director, March 2018 – present)
Website	www.theglobalfund.org

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (or simply the Global Fund) is an international financing and partnership organization that aims to "attract, leverage and invest additional resources to end the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria to support attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations".^[1] This multistakeholder international organization maintains its secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland.^[2] The organization began operations in January 2002.^[2] Microsoft founder Bill Gates (through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) was one of the first donors to provide seed money for the partnership.^[3] From January 2006 it has benefited from certain US Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities under executive order 13395, which conferred International Organizations Immunities Act status on it.^[4]

The Global Fund is the world's largest financier of AIDS, TB, and malaria prevention, treatment, and care programs.^[5] As of June 2019, the organization had disbursed more than US$41.6 billion to support these programs.^[6] According to the organization, in 2018 it helped finance the distribution of 131 million insecticide-treated nets to combat malaria, provided anti-tuberculosis treatment for 5.3 million people, supported 18.9 million people on antiretroviral therapy for AIDS, and since its founding saved 32 million lives worldwide.^[7]

The Global Fund is a financing mechanism rather than an implementing agency. Programs are implemented by in-country partners such as ministries of health, while the Global Fund secretariat, whose staff only have an office in Geneva, monitor the programs. Implementation is overseen by Country Coordinating Mechanisms, country-level committees consisting of in-country stakeholders that need to include, according to Global Fund requirements, a broad spectrum of representatives from government, NGOs, faith-based organizations, the private sector, and people living with the diseases. This system has kept the Global Fund secretariat smaller than other international bureaucracies. The model has also raised concerns about conflict of interest, as some of the stakeholders represented on the Country Coordinating Mechanisms may also receive money from the Global Fund, either as grant recipients, sub-recipients, private persons (e.g. for travel or participation at seminars) or contractors.