Independent review of the Global Fund will be concluded by September / Co-chairs appoint five members to complete high-level panel which will assess risk of fraud

Independent review of the Global Fund will be concluded by September / Co-chairs appoint five members to complete high-level panel which will assess risk of fraud

 

GENEVA, Switzerland, May 4, 2011/African Press Organization (APO)/ — The co-chairs of the high-level panel that will review the Global Fund’s financial safeguards, Festus Mogae and Michael O. Leavitt, have selected the group of eminent persons and experts who will jointly conduct the assessment. The panel and the Global Fund have also agreed on the scope and timeline of the review, which is scheduled to be concluded by September 15, 2011.

The members selected to complete the high-level panel are:

–    Zeinab Bashir El Bakri, Director, Office of His Highness the Prime Minister of Kuwait and former Vice-President Sector Operations of the African Development Bank;

–    Norbert Hauser, Germany’s Vice-President of the Federal Court of Audit;

–    Gabriel Jaramillo, Chairman of the Sovereign Bank Board and Special Advisor at the United Nations Secretary-General Office of the Special Envoy for Malaria;

–    The Honourable Barry O’Keefe, Consultant, Clayton UTZ Sydney and former Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Australia);

–    Claude Rubinowicz, Chief Executive for France’s Agence du patrimoine immatériel de l’État (APIE, Agency for Public Intangibles of France) and former Inspecteur Général des Finances.

Under the leadership of Mr. Mogae, former President of Botswana, and Governor Leavitt, former U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services, the panel is assessing the risk of fraud and misappropriation in the current Global Fund portfolio, and the systems and controls in place which seek to ensure that the resources reach beneficiaries and are used for their intended purposes. To perform the assessment, the members of the panel will examine a representative sample of grants in countries in different risk categories, drawing conclusions and making recommendations, as appropriate.

The panel’s consultants started work on the review in March and have already covered considerable ground.

The panel will provide to the Global Fund Board two interim progress updates via e-mail, a longer progress report by the end of June, and a final report by September 15, 2011.

“I am delighted that such a diverse and well qualified group of high-calibre professionals has been selected. The Secretariat will provide all possible cooperation and support to the panel’s work”, said Professor Michel Kazatchkine, Global Fund Executive Director.

The panel’s review is part of a broader set of measures that continue to be implemented to strengthen the Global Fund’s financial safeguards. As with all Global Fund reports, the findings will be made public.

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The Global Fund is a unique, public-private partnership and international financing institution dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria. This partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities represents an innovative approach to international health financing. The Global Fund’s model is based on the concepts of country ownership and performance-based funding, which means that people in countries implement their own programs based on their priorities and the Global Fund provides financing on the condition that verifiable results are achieved.

 

Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has become the main financier of programs to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 21.7 billion for more than 600 programs in 150 countries (as of 31 December 2010). To date, programs supported by the Global Fund have saved 6.5 million lives by providing AIDS treatment for 3 million people, anti-tuberculosis treatment for 7.7 million people and 160 million insecticide-treated nets for the prevention of malaria. The Global Fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organizations to supplement existing efforts in dealing with the three diseases.

SOURCE 

The Global Fund