BACKUP Health Technical support for Global Fund country partners

Since 2002, a large group of public and private donors has been channeling a big share of the foreign aid funding dedicated to fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria worldwide through the Global Fund. This Swiss Foundation with headquarter in Geneva does not have permanent representations in the countries where it invests. Grant implementation is ensured by recipient Governments, civil society, multilateral and private partners that are represented in a coordination and governance platform called the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM). CCMs are meant to foster country-ownership, multi-stakeholder-decision-making and coherence with national health sector priorities. This inclusive country dialogue platform is mandated to supervise the preparation, approve and submit the grant proposals, to select the principal grant recipients and to oversee the implementation. In several countries, the CCMs face difficulties to fulfil these critical functions. In order to improve their performance, the CCMs have the possibility to request technical support. This technical support is delivered by bilateral providers, multilateral organizations and other international actors.

Selected countries develop and implement more efficiently the programmes financed by the Global Fund and improve the integration of the fight against the three diseases into the broader health priorities of these countries.

Ultimately, the achievement of this goal will improve not only the access to prevention, diagnosis and treatment measures for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, but also to other health services. The Global Fund efforts to move towards more integrated service delivery and to strengthen systems for health will benefit not only the vulnerable groups such as women and girls and key populations, but also all the users of health services.

The primary beneficiaries will be CCM stakeholders. Government and non-government, private sector and civil society CCM members will be trained and empowered to perform and evolve their functions efficiently. This will improve the quality of the funding request and grant management which in turn should contribute to an improved performance of CCMs and health sector governance within the context of the Global Fund Strategy 2017-22.

The ultimate beneficiaries will be those at risk or affected by the three diseases as well as all users of the health services with a special focus on the poor and vulnerable people.

The BACKUP approach for CCM strengthening aims at achieving the following objectives:

• Improve the governance of GF grants with a rights-based approach and foster the ethical behavior of CCM Members.
• Use principles underlying CCMs in the GF framework (e.g. multi-stakeholder platforms, governance and accountability as well as participatory management) as a model to achieve more harmonised and sustainable health sector governance.

Resultados previstos:  

• The governance of national coordination mechanisms related to Global Fund programs is improved,
• The integration of CCMs in the broader health sector management structures is increased,
• The prerequisites are created that enable the programming of Global Fund grants in a way that strengthens the overall health system and promote a shared responsibility of the health sector stakeholders,
• In selected countries, the management capacity of Global Fund grants recipients is strengthened, in particular civil society organisations.

Resultados de las fases anteriores:  

Since 2002, BACKUP Health has helped implement over 565 interventions to support government and civil society partners in around 90 countries, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013 SDC initiated a one off co-funding of BACKUP Health focused on risk management. The SDC co-financing enabled BACKUP to support 22 out of 47 risk-management measures. The whole BACKUP was evaluated end of 2014 and received an overall rating of “successful” according to OECD/DAC criteria. SDC co-funding ended in March 2016 after a joint study exploring the potential to better integrate CCMs within the health sector dialogue platforms. A position paper prepared by Germany, Switzerland and France on Country Coordinating Mechanisms was presented to the Board of the Global Fund in November 2016 and launched a subsequent process at Board level on this topic.

IPPF, International HIV/AIDS Alliance, Aidspan, Global Fund CCM Hub, Initiative 5%

German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM), UNAIDS, P4H, Swiss TPH

Fase 1 01.07.2017 - 31.03.2020   (Completed)