The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) which is more familiar as Global Fund is a unique global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
The global fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organisations to supplement existing efforts dealing with the three diseases.
Since its creation in 2002, the global fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Bangladesh has been working with global fund since 2004.
Recently, a high level three-member team from the headquarters visited Bangladesh to oversee the activities and utilisation of the fund in this country and to see the impact of the global fund.
The teams comprises Mr. Taufiqur Rahman, Regional Team Leader, South & West Asia Team, Mr. Artashes Mirzoyan, Fund Portfolio Manager, South & West Asia Region and Mr. Manab Basnet, Programme Officer of the GFATM.
The Country Coordination Mechanism (CCM) secretariate organised a press conference to share the experience of the visiting team with journalists.
They informed in front of the press that the country programme in Bangladesh is satisfactory. They visited fields and got positive feedback. They are hopeful that this positive feedback may help to increase the fund allocation for Bangladesh in the next round of disbursement.
Mr. Taufiq told that the fund utilisation is better now after working in collaboration with partner NGOs. They had several meeting with the partner organisations about their works.
In answering to the question of the journalists about the dispute of utilisation of the fund by local partners mainly by the NGOs, they told that they are quite happy about the transparency of the process. Now the global fund is providing financial support. In near future, they are willing to provide support in the procurement also in the form of voluntary pool procurement, if the government agrees.
Dr Riffat Lucy, Co-ordinator of Bangladesh Country Co-ordination Mechanism (CCM) informed the press that the secretariate is going to launch a web site very soon where the activities will be more transparent and there will be more availability of information.
Source: The Daily Star, December 27, 2008
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