The Preparatory Meeting of the Global Fund’s 5th Replenishment was held on December 17 in Tokyo, and was hosted by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was the first time that such a meeting had been held in Asia.
Bill Gates was among the roughly 150 individuals in attendance representing national governments, civil society organizations, corporations, UN agencies, and private foundations.
Foreign Minister Kishida offered the opening remarks, in which he emphasized the importance of building and strengthening comprehensive and sustainable health systems and realizing UHC as the fundamental solution to eradicating the three major infectious diseases. He also expressed hope that the Global Fund would play a leading role in building strong health systems in each country and praised the fund’s policy of respecting individual dignity, which is in line with the central pillar of Japan’s foreign policy, human security. Discussions at the meeting focused on the achievements of the fund to date, financing mechanisms for health system strengthening and UHC, and innovation, as well as the necessary funds for the Global Fund’s next replenishment period (2017–2019).
Partner institutions such as WHO, UNAIDS, and Stop TB Partnership estimate that in order to achieve the international community’s goal of stopping the spread of the three diseases by 2030, the low- and middle-income countries that the Global Fund supports will require US$97 billion over the next three years (including both foreign assistance and domestic funding).
The Global Fund is aiming to procure $13 billion. At this meeting, the Global Fund officially released its report, “Investment Case for the Global Fund’s 2017-2019 Replenishment,” (summary | full report), which provides the basis for that sum and describes what the Global Fund can achieve over three years with those funds, including the following (see the full report for details):
- “Save up to 8 million lives through programs supported by the Global Fund (putting the fund on track to save 30–32 million lives from the time it was created up to 2020)”
- “Prevent up to 300 million new infections across the three diseases”
- “Encourage countries receiving support to increase their domestic budgets to fight the three diseases. That amount will exceed US$41 billion.”
- “Produce long-term economic benefits of up to $290 billion”
Read Global Fund Outlines Investment Case to End Epidemics for more information about the meeting.
One day before this meeting, JCIE co-sponsored an international conference, “Universal Health Coverage in the New Development Era,” along with the government of Japan and JICA. The necessity of building sustainable and strong health systems in order to conquer infectious diseases was discussed at both the meeting and conference. Since the Ebola outbreak, this has been a common concern among people involved in global health and the Global Fund emphasized this point at the pre-replenishment meeting. Cooperation between the fund and Japan in promoting UHC and health system strengthening is expected to continue to deepen in the future. Hosting two international conferences on global health in Japan is a significant opportunity given that Japan is serving as the president of the G7 in 2016, and will be organizing the G7 Ise-Shima Summit, the G7 Kobe Health Ministers’ Meeting, and the 6th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI).
About Global Fund Replenishment
Once every three years, the Global Fund calculates the funding needed to fight against the tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, based upon which it calls for contributions from the international community. This process, known as “replenishment,” includes a pre-replenishment meeting followed by a replenishment meeting a year later where each country announces their intended contribution. Donor countries take turns hosting the two replenishment meetings. The 4th replenishment meeting was held in Washington in December 2013 and the pre-replenishment meeting was held in Belgium. This was the first time that a replenishment preparatory meeting was held in Asia and the first time it was hosted by the president of the G7.
