Integrating Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV Services
For millions of women in poor countries, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services are the primary point of contact with the health care system. Thus, integrating SRH and HIV/AIDS programs will be critical to increasing the number of women with access to comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care, including prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Over the last two years, the Global AIDS Alliance has partnered with Population Action International and other advocates and service providers to secure increased investments in SRH/HIV integration through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and a reinvigorated efforts is now under way to increase funding for integrated SRH/HIV proposals during the Global Fund's Round 8 grant cycle. Specifically, this project seeks to support the Fund's Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) to develop and submit high-quality, innovative Round 8 proposals that include SRH/HIV integration. The initiative is particularly timely because Round 8 proposals will recommende "dual track financing," which means that grants should be awarded to both government and civil-society implementers. Click here to review the Global Fund's Round 8 call for proposals.
Click here for links to the Aidspan guidelines for producing Round 8 proposals.
The Round 8 initiative was formally launched at a meeting in Addis Ababa, February 26-29, co-hosted by the Global AIDS Alliance, Interact Worldwide, International HIV/AIDS Alliance, International Planned Parenthood Federation and IPPF's Africa Regional Office, Friends of the Global Fund Africa, and Population Action International. Click here to read the meeting communiqué.
This civil-society meeting provided an opportunity to review the experiences of selected countries in submitting integrated proposals to the Global Fund and convened representatives from partner NGOs, bilateral and multilateral institutions, including the Global Fund, and delegations from 10 focus countries: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia. A global advocacy strategy was developed to optimize the Global Fund's responsiveness to integrated SRH/HIV proposals, and a new Africa Advocacy Forum on RH/HIV Integration (AFRHI) was created to discuss and promote advocacy for integration at the regional and global levels. (This forum is being hosted by the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa.)
As part of this project, GAA continues to play a lead role in advocacy targeting the Global Fund and its technical partners. In addition, GAA is managing a series of catalytic subgrants to help enable local advocacy groups promote the inclusion of civil-society perspectives within the CCMs; persuade CCMs to prioritize SRH/HIV integration; and develop successful integrated proposals. Click here for a February 2008 backgrounder on Global Fund policy related to SRH/HIV integration.
In addition, GAA and our partners continue to provide support to CCMs and in-country civil society groups to build their capacity to develop successful Global Fund proposals that include SRH/HIV integration. Click here to download updated guidelines for integrating SRH into Round 8 HIV/AIDS proposals to the Global Fund.
Global Fund's Gender Decision Point
In November 2007, the Global Fund's Board of Directors passed a decision urging the Secretariat to make important and rapid changes to the staffing structure and strategy of all Global Fund mechanisms to ensure a gender-sensitive response in all Global Fund programming. As a result, civil-society organizations engaged with the Global Fund, including members of the Board delegations, are calling for broad and bold reforms to the operations and policies of the Global Fund to ensure that this decision is taken seriously, that changes are made with an eye toward gender transformation, not merely gender sensitivity, and that all relevant areas of gender-targeted programs for women, girls, men and all sexual minorities-are taken into account and addressed at every appropriate opportunity.
Click here for a series of recommendations for implementing the Global Fund's decision point.
Earlier Work on SRH/HIV Integration
The current SRH/HIV integration initiative builds on over two years of work to promote increased Global Fund investments in integrated SRH/HIV programming, and links to a number of documents produced to advance this work are provided below:
In August 2007, GAA and Interact Worldwide released a report on integrated SRH/HIV proposals submitted as part of the Global Fund's Round 7 grant-making. Click here to download a PDF file of the shadow report.
This shadow report focuses on the outcomes of efforts to accelerate SRH/HIV integration that began with an advocacy summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 2006, organized by GAA, Interact Worldwide, International HIV/AIDS Alliance, IPPF, and Population Action International. This summit convened stakeholders from SRH, HIV/AIDS, and malaria organizations, United Nations and World Health Organization staff, and staff from the Global Fund Secretariat. Click here to download a PDF file of the Advocacy Action Plan: Integration of Sexual and Reproductive Health Within the HIV and Malaria Components of Country Coordinated Proposals.
In addition, the summit organizers produced a report that details the discussions in Geneva and provides additional background information for potential advocacy partners. Click here to download an MS Word file of the Report of the Advocacy Summit on the Global Fund Round 7.
A discussion paper prepared for the December 2006 summit provided background on the need to integrate SRH with HIV and malaria services. Click here to download a PDF file of this paper.
For more information about these documents, and GAA's ongoing efforts to integrate SRH and HIV/AIDS and malaria care and services, please contact Lisa Schechtman at lschechtman@globalaidsalliance.org or 202-789-0432, Ext. 203.