GF/B17/DP18
Approved by the Board on: 29 April 2008
Building the Demand for a Scaled up Malaria Response
1. The Board acknowledges and commends the call by the UN Secretary General and the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership to help countries achieve the G8, the World Health Assembly and RBM targets to achieve universal coverage of an essential malaria control intervention package by December 31, 2010. In particular, the Board recognizes the epidemiological rationale set forth by the WHO for a massive scale-up of effective preventive measures to reach these targets. As the largest external financier of malaria programs worldwide, the Board is committed to ensuring that the Global Fund is acting as a key partner, along with others, in this extraordinary public health effort to meet the demand from countries to scale-up their malaria programs.
2. Given the urgency of the need to devote additional resources and to increase implementation capacities at country level to achieve universal coverage, the Board urges countries to submit ambitious Round 8, Round 9, and Rolling Continuation Channel proposals aimed at scaling up comprehensive malaria control programs (particularly the distribution of long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) and ACTs) and are linked to broader health systems strengthening.
3. The Board also urges countries to take advantage of the flexibility offered in Global Fund financing and, if appropriate, to consider revising budgets for existing and new grants and for Phase 2 requests to frontload resources and accelerate implementation and scale-up of LLIN distribution, ACTs and other malaria control interventions.
4. The Board, recognizing the increased demand from applicants for high quality technical assistance, urges the RBM Partnership to finance and operationalize the Malaria Implementation Support Team to ensure maximum effectiveness of Global Fund resources to achieve universal coverage.