Board Decisions

GF/B43/EDP07

Approved by the Board on: 07 July 2020

Extending the wambo.org pilot to include COVID-19 products

1. The Board recognizes that the COVID-19 pandemic remains a global public health emergency and that failure to control the pandemic threatens to derail the Global Fund’s mission to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria and to strengthen systems for health. The Board further recognizes the importance of ensuring rapid availability of quality COVID-19 products as part of the global response to COVID-19, and the significant benefits that beneficiaries in Global Fund-eligible and transitioned countries could potentially gain from improved access to pooled procurement volumes of these products.
2. The Board notes the Secretariat is engaging with partners, notably WHO, UNICEF, UNITAID, GDF, FIND, Africa CDC and the newly-created Africa Medical Supply Platform, and taking an active role in the ACT-A partnership and the Diagnostics Consortium, to ensure collaboration, coherence and flexibility in providing procurement options and solutions for countries to address the challenges of managing supply constraints and access to quality health products in the context of COVID-19. In this rapidly evolving context, the Board wishes to leverage wambo.org, and the pilot for non-Global Fund-financed transactions as defined in GF/B42/DP05 (the Pilot) to facilitate broader access to COVID-19 product.
3. The Board notes that the Secretariat is using the wambo.org platform to facilitate the procurement of certain COVID-19 products purchased by Global Fund Principal Recipients. The Board further notes that the framework of eligibility and quality assurance defined in GF/B42/EDP11 for COVID-19 products is being proposed to apply to products available to all eligible buyers on wambo.org.
4. In order to allow broader access to these products, as presented in GF/B43/ER07, the Board decides to formally extend the scope of the Pilot to include for eligible buyers as defined in GF/B42/DP05, the purchase of all COVID-19 products available in wambo.org for procurement by Global Fund Principal Recipients.
5. Such non-Global Fund-financed transactions for COVID-19 products will:
   - be individually subject to agreement by the Global Fund and, if applicable, to agreement by the product catalogue owners or manufacturers;
   - not count towards the cap of USD 50 million of transactions for the Pilot otherwise applicable to non-COVID-19 products;
   - be issued as Purchase Orders by wambo.org within the period ending in 31 December 2020, unless extended by the Board following recommendation by the Strategy Committee.
6. As with the Pilot, use of the wambo.org platform for non-Global Fund-financed transactions will remain optional for eligible buyers of COVID-19 products.
7. Recognizing the extraordinary conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic under which non-Global Fund-financed transactions for COVID-19 products will be processed, and the importance of maintaining the integrity of the Pilot as currently established, the Board further decides:
   a. reporting of transactions for COVID-19 products will be included in the biannual reporting on the Pilot to the Strategy Committee, following the same principles as other transactions, in particular with respect to the determination of metrics for reporting, which will be agreed by the Strategy Committee in October 2020. However, COVID-19 product transactions will be disaggregated from reporting on other Pilot transactions, so as to enable integration with overall reporting on the COVID-19 response, and to avoid distorting reporting on the original Pilot.
   b. these COVID-19 transactions, disaggregated from other Pilot transactions, will be included in the final independent evaluation of the Pilot, to be delivered no later than end of 2022.
   c. with the Strategy Committee, to resume broader discussions of wambo.org’s future strategy for the Pilot and its role and market influence within the development of the Phase 2 of the Market Shaping Strategy and the next Global Fund Strategy in 2020-2021.

Budgetary Implications

The cost of additional licenses associated with the use of wambo.org will be absorbed within the Secretariat’s existing license packages. If further licenses are needed, costs and options to cover these costs will be evaluated by the Secretariat.