Health workforce support opportunities in the Global Fund's Round 11
NEW REFERENCE GUIDE ON USING GLOBAL FUND'S ROUND 11 FOR HEALTH WORKFORCE
In the lead up to the launch of the Round 11 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), the Alliance calls on its members, partners and potential applicants to pay due attention to the funding window open for health system strengthening (HSS) interventions. The Global Fund's primary objective is to respond to the countries needs related to the three target diseases, which also involves addressing critical health system bottlenecks such as the shortage of health personnel. Round 11 will be launched on 15 August.
For the first time, Round 11 will offer opportunities for eligible countries to request cross-cutting HSS funds independently from a disease specific proposal, as long as the proposed interventions directly contribute to improving the countries responses to more than one of the diseases. In many occasions the correlation between the disease specific control strategy and the availability of skilled, motivated and supported health workforce has been acknowledged. One recent example is the bold message that emerged from the side session "Can MDG 6 be achieved with the Health Workforce we have?" at the High Level Meeting on AIDS in New York, where human resources for health (HRH) was clearly recognized as one of most critical pillars of the national AIDS response.
To help countries prepare sound proposals for Round 11, the Global Fund has developed an information note on The Global Fund's Approach to Health System Strengthening, to which the Alliance has contributed. This document provides essential and practical information on how to develop or integrate HRH components into Round 11 proposals. The information note also serves as a gateway to more in depth resources such as the Technical Reference for Developing Successful Cross-Cutting Health Systems Strengthening Applications for the Global Fund's Round 11 Support, developed in collaboration between the Global Fund and Alliance partner Physician for Human Rights.
The Alliance is delighted to work closely with the Global Fund to ensure that support for health workforce development is made available to countries, and encourages all interested parties to take this opportunity and use the resources available here and on the Global Fund's web site.