Support to Global Fund on Application of Disease Transmission Models, Geospatial Analysis/Modelling Packages & Costing Tools

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is a 21st century organization designed to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics. As partnership between government, civil society, the private sector, and people affected by the disease, the Global Fund mobilizes and invests approximately US$ 4 billion a year to support programs run by local experts in more than 100 countries. The Global Fund operates with three core principles: partnership, country ownership and performance-based funding. By challenging barriers and embracing innovative approaches, the Global Fund strives for maximum impact.

Maximizing impact of Global Fund investment as well as domestic and other international resources is one of the four pillars of the Global Fund 2017-2022 strategy to accelerate progress towards the Strategic Development Goals (or “SDG “) targets of ending HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Optimized allocation of resources across and within countries is one of the most critical decisions that policy makers need to make in order to maximize impact of available resources at national and international level. The application of disease transmission models and costing tools would provide a platform to turn the raw data collected through various means including routine surveillance systems and surveys into strategic information which could support the policy makers in program and funding decisions. They would also provide an opportunity to bring the key stakeholders from epidemiology and financing teams in the national control programs together to address the key questions on past and future impact of the program and approaches to mobilize additional resources to close the funding gap and maximize the impact of limited resources. Development of the national strategic plans (NSPs) and the Global Fund funding requests (FRs) to the Global Fund can be informed and strengthened by use of disease transmission models and costing tools which include robust estimation of funding need and trajectory of diseases given the available resources. They can also support allocation decisions and inform evaluation of comparative merits of competing implementations scenarios. Illustrating past impact could also serve as a strong advocacy tool to mobilize additional resources to close the funding gap.

At the Global Fund Secretariat, the models/tools can support development of investment cases, strategic targets for impact and service delivery, cross-disease/country allocation decisions and advocacy purposes.

The Strategic Information Department and the Grant Management Division at the Global Fund have both supported partners and countries to institutionalize the utilization of disease transmission models and costing tools to support the achievement of national and the Global Fund’s strategic objective of maximizing impact. These models/tools are now being used for both portfolio-level impact covering the application of country specific models to multiple countries and regions and country level support for improving program design which helps to enhance investment efficiency and maximize impact. There is a strong link between in-country and portfolio-level application of models, as the former should be the basis of the latter, therefore, the Global Fund has been working with technical and funding partners, academic institutions and modelling teams to support further development and improvement of various epidemiological impact models and costing tools, to fill in the data gaps (by supporting data systems such surveillance systems, surveys, DHIS2) which are critical input to the models and tools and to mobilize technical partners to support and institutionalize application of models and costing tools to strengthen NSPs and FRs to make use of data for action and maximizing impact of available resources.