Study Examines Global Fund Financing Methods

Main Category: Public Health
Also Included In: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 01 Apr 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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"The 'Diagonal' Approach to Global Fund Financing: A Cure for the Broader Malaise of Health Systems?" Globalization and Health: The study examines how the "polarization" between "vertical" financing, or funding disease-specific approaches, and "horizontal" financing, which aims to improve overall health systems, has "obscured" the prospects offered by "diagonal" financing, which aims to reach disease-specific targets through improved health systems. According to the study, the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in April 2007 agreed to consider financing comprehensive country health programs, and the new International Health Partnership will help low-income nations to develop such programs. This "combination could lead" the Global Fund to a "much broader financing scope," the study says. It adds that a "transformation" of the Global Fund into a "Global Health Fund is feasible, but only if accompanied by a substantial increase of donor commitments." According to the study, the transformation of the Global Fund into a diagonal, and perhaps eventually horizontal, financer "should happen gradually and carefully and be accompanied by measures to safeguard its exceptional features" (Ooms et al., Globalization and Health, 3/25).

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