A new report from the Centre for Global Development’s Working Group on Value for Money in Global Health was released last week, titled ‘More Health for the Money: putting incentives to work for the Global Fund and its partners‘.
The report provides suggestions for improvement in four key areas of the Global Fund’s grant-making cycle: allocation, contracts, costs and spending, and verification.
The report argues that instead of responding to countries’ requests for support for programs, which may be sub-optimal, the Global Fund should instead present countries with a menu of cost effective options for them to choose from. It also says the Fund should revise its contracting process and link funding to progress towards end-goals, that it should track the unit-cost of services delivered, and more rigorously measure the impact of its partners’ programs.
They’ve made a great video to explain the report findings, using the example of bed nets to show how these changes could help the Global Fund improve value for money.
This would have been more impressive if they had taken a broader definition of VFM – where is Aid Effectivenss? Where is Country Ownership, building capacity and commitments to Paris & Busan principles?
This is an area that GFATM has been weak on from the outset, and this does not help.
Richard Horton’s recent Comment in The Lancet captures the issue well:
http://download.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140673613615330.pdf