The Global Fund and the future of global health

Writing in Forbes earlier this month, Peter Sands, the Executive Director of the Global Fund, was candid about the future. “The model that has delivered such progress will not be the model to take us forward.” He talks of the need for innovations; to dismantle silos; and to decrease dependence, promising plans for all but the poorest countries to transition to self-reliance. But his ambitions extend beyond the Global Fund. “We must be bold—merge and close some agencies. Strip out duplication and focus on comparative advantage…if the global health architecture looks as it does today three years from now, we will have failed.” These are radical words. Sania Nishtar, the head of Gavi, has also written about the need for a “new consensus”. UNAIDS may close next year. Change is coming, and although it has been driven at least partly by adverse circumstances, it also affords huge opportunities: to create more equitable and effective institutions, to redistribute power, and to reimagine what global health should look like in the post-SDG era.

Read the full editorial, published in The Lancet, here.