Few of the HIV-specific proposals for rounds 8 and 9 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s funding review had compelling gender components despite the Global Fund secretariat’s Round 8 guidelines seeking an increased focus on gender-related issues, Christina Droggitis wrote on the Center for Global Development’s Global Health Policy blog.
Droggitis said that while several of Round 8 proposals considered overall gender issues, few provided situational analyses or strategies to address gender inequality. Likewise, only a handful of the proposals described how proposed gender-sensitive interventions will be implemented.
“This is not to say that the Global Fund has made no advances on gender. In fact, measured against our recommendations, they have taken initial good steps towards increasing their gender response. However, it seems that these changes are still not effectively translating into gender-responsive programming on the ground,” Droggitis argued.
Droggitis suggested that the Global Fund should encourage countries to seek technical assistance from UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and similar organizations to better highlight gender issues in future proposals.
