April Newsletter

A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Dear All,

In the past several weeks, ACTION partners engaged in TB advocacy around World TB Day to spread awareness of the oldest epidemic and help garner financial commitments to #EndTB, particularly ahead of the Global Fund’s 7th Replenishment. Partners across Africa, Europe, and North America held events, lead social media campaigns, engaged members of parliament, and more to mark the day.

In an exciting announcement from the White House on March 28, we saw a positive outcome of this vital advocacy. The U.S., who will host the Global Fund’s next pledging conference this fall, demonstrated leadership by pledging $6 billion to the replenishment. This pledge is an important step in ending AIDS, TB, and malaria and strengthening health care delivery systems, and building momentum for additional governments to make bold pledges.

While #WTBD is a key moment that partners leverage, our Ending the Epidemics pillar has focused on advocating for financial and policy commitments to end TB for decades. To learn more about our #WTBD advocacy, visit our website here.

Looking ahead, partners are leveraging the advocacy opportunities that electoral processes bring, like GHA France and Results Australia. GHA has been elevating civil society’s asks with candidates and their advisors. On March 2, they launched a Global Health Campaign alongside 7 CSOs to address global health in the French Presidential Election. The campaign is calling for candidates to include global health in their programs. Partners, including CITAM+ in Zambia, will follow up on the CEPI replenishment summit to garner additional commitments to end the pandemics of today and tomorrow.

I, alongside two other women leaders in global health, published a piece in MsMagazine titled “In a World Increasingly Defined By Crises, We Need Women’s Leadership Like Never Before.” Negaya Chorley, CEO of Results Australia, Kavita Patel, primary care physician and former advisor to the Obama administration, and I argue that the world needs more women in top leadership roles and male leaders who are willing to embrace the qualities that many women leaders exemplified at the onset of the pandemic.  

We are gearing up for a busy Spring ahead of World Immunization Week, the World Health Assembly, and more. Follow and engage with us on Twitter to stay up to date on the partnership’s latest achievements and advocacy asks.

In solidarity,

Vineeta

Vineeta Gupta, MD, JD, LL.M
Director, ACTION Secretariat

Advocacy Updates:

World TB Day Recap and Wins:

  • Tanzania is one of several countries that has benefitted from the work of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), especially in averting deaths caused by TB, HIV, and malaria. As GFATM is gearing up for its 7th replenishment, Health Promotion Tanzania (HDT) mobilized local partners to develop and submit sign-on letters to 9 embassies of countries among the top 10 GFATM financiers, calling on these countries to make commitments for the 7th GFATM replenishment.
  • TB is one of the deadliest infectious diseases just behind COVID-19, with nearly 73 people dying of TB every day in Tanzania, yet it remains underfunded. Building on previous advocacy efforts, HDT formed a dedicated TB Domestic Financing task team that will work to propose how resources can be leveraged to increase domestic funding for TB.
  • To spread awareness about TB in Tanzania, HDT recorded a short video with 8 people of different backgrounds describing their experience with TB. On social media, they invited challenge participants to record their own video, receiving more than 30 video clips with more than 200,000 views to date. HDT will announce three challenge winners in the coming weeks.
  • At Results Canada’s World TB Day event, Honourable Minister of International Development Harjit Sajjan announced a commitment of CAD$11 million to TB REACH. This investment will contribute to finding people with TB in hard-to-reach communities so that they get the care they need, supporting community-led initiatives and filling gaps in service delivery caused by the pandemic. 
  • RESULTS UK hosted a well-attended reception in Parliament for MPs, Lords, and other stakeholders to celebrate World TB Day. The room heard from Scott Boule of the Global Fund on the importance of the upcoming replenishment campaign, as well as members of the UKAPTB. The APPG also released a report that looks at the gap in international targets ahead of the UNHLM 2023.
  • RESULTS UK also organized a debate in Westminster Hall to discuss TB, meaning an FCDO Minister had to come to parliament to speak about global TB. The debate was highly productive, with the Government Minister announcing additional funding for TB REACH as part of her speech. The Minister spoke about a range of topics, including the global fund, TB R&D, TB financing, and the situation in Ukraine. Watch the debate here.
  • In collaboration with GFAN Africa, WACI Health, and other CSOs, ACTION partner KANCO engaged with MPs for the 7th Global Fund replenishment and domestic resource mobilization (DRM) campaign and officially kicked off the replenishment campaign in Kenya.
  • Results Australia and the Australian TB Caucus held the annual Parliamentary breakfast event for World TB Day, complemented by Results Australia’s Light Up Red campaign and World TB Day Parliamentary motion activities. This year focused on the Global Fund and leveraging the investment case to garner strong support in the lead-up to the replenishment. TB Caucus Co-Chairs Warren and Sharon both called on the Australian Government to invest AUD$450M in the Global Fund at the upcoming 7th replenishment.
  • As part of its World TB Day events, Results Australia CEO Negaya Chorley and Australian global health leader and Burnet Institute director, Prof Brendan Crabb AC, co-authored the op-ed “As tuberculosis resurges in the Asia Pacific, what lessons from Covid can save Australia?” published by the Guardian. The media generated by Results Australia was extremely successful in promoting its recommendation that the Australian Government commits at least AUD$450 million to the Global Fund.
  • GHA France launched a new blog series focused on the role of the Global Fund and the importance of its work. The first piece, It is time we give people with TB the respect they deserve and the right to life and health. And it starts with investments, includes an interview of Rhéa Lobo, alternate member of the Board of the Stop TB Partnership and extra-pulmonary TB survivor. Her interview highlights the need to invest more in the fight against TB.

Other Advocacy:

  • GHA France, Brussels office has been advocating for the past 2 years for a review or adoption of a Global Health Strategy by the European Commission (EC), as the last EU global health framework dates to 2010. This past month, GHA France met with a coalition of CSOs to plan their advocacy strategy for how to keep the issue high on the agenda and identify key actors who could build on the momentum and encourage the Commission to commit to the Global Health Strategy. In addition, GHA France has been advocating alongside civil society allies for the Global Health Policy Forum to take place in 2022; they recently heard positive news in that regard and will continue to monitor the process.
  • ACTION partner WACI Health held a Joint Learning Agenda (JLA) Global Webinar for 150 participants in both anglophone and francophone countries as a close-out session of the JLA initiative’s Phase 1. Bringing together funders, the trained trainers, and local advocates, the webinar focused on their experiences and lessons learned, and participants discussed next steps for their advocacy.
  • Solange Kone, co-founder of ASAPSU, joined the GFF to talk about COVID-19’s impacts on health systems in Cote d’Ivoire and how communities, child heath workers, and CSOs have mobilized to protect essential healthcare services. Watch here.
  • At the Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit, Italy announced a €20 million pledge to CEPI, a €5 million increase over their previous contribution to CEPI. This is a significant result and shows solid political support in Italy for global health and pandemic preparedness.
  • As co-chair of the GFF CSO Accountability Working Group, Xochitl Sanchez from the ACTION Secretariat presented updates and potential priorities for 2022 related to accountability during the GFF CSO Coordinating Group’s “Progress Updates and Agenda Setting for 2022” webinar. Participants conveyed the need for increased support for accountability at the country level and to update the scorecard guidelines from 2019 to better address accountability needs and the impact of COVID-19 on RMNCAH+N. The Accountability working group will meet next month to flesh out priorities and next steps.
  • WACI Health co-organized a virtual event titled “Global Call to Action: End the COVID-19 Crisis and Prevent the Next Pandemic,” co-hosted by the Africa CDC, Amref, the African Union, the COVID-19 Global Accountability Platform, PAN, and others. The event aimed to harness diverse voices from around the world to highlight the urgent actions needed at the Global COVID-19 Leaders’ Summit, G7 and G20 Summits, and other critical events and convenings.
  • Alongside 7 CSOs, GHA France, Paris office launched the advocacy and communications campaign #FairePlusPourLaSantéMondiale (more action for global health) to address global health in the French Presidential Election. The campaign is calling out the different candidates to include global health in their program.
  • GHA France participated in the France International Forum with the spokespersons of the main presidential candidates. GHA France sent a candidate questionnaire to ask whether they commit to GHA France’s 10 demands and, if so, how they would implement them. GHA France’s demands include increasing France’s health ODA to 0.1% of GNI and adopting a feminist approach to global health to address the specific health needs and vulnerabilities of women and girls, including SRHR.
  • Alongside NGOs from the Collectif Santé Mondiale, GHA France published a detailed analysis of Global Health under Emmanuel Macron’s mandate. The analysis includes key global health challenges such as French ODA, accountability in the commitments to multilateral funds like Global Fund and Gavi, the French response to the COVID-19 crisis, and the need for health systems strengthening. GHA France shared this analysis in person in a meeting with the Global Affairs attaché of the Elysée.
  • RESULTS UK hosted a roundtable in collaboration with Save the Children UK, inviting senior civil servants and MPs raising awareness of the work of the GFF, their upcoming replenishment, and the financial ask from the UK. RESULTS UK will continue to engage on this issue to highlight the need for the UK to continue its commitment to GFF.
  • On the second anniversary of the WHO announcing COVID-19 as a pandemic, RESULTS UK organized a social media campaign and took part in the People’s Vaccine Alliance’s video to mark the grim anniversary on March 11, calling on the UK Government to play its part in the global pandemic response.
  • As hosts of The GFF We Want campaign, WACI health conducted a webinar to shed light on the results of the regional consultation focused on civil society contributions to the GFF resource mobilization efforts, capturing lessons learned, and identifying best practices that will help inform current and future resource mobilization activities. Case studies were conducted in Zambia, Senegal, and Tanzania and lessons learned by partners through the GFF country process and engagement at both the global and national level will be captured and synthesized. Some recommendations emerged:  
    • Joint accountability in disbursement and use of finance 
    • Build the capacity of CSOs in RMNCA+H efforts 
    • Encourage participation of other donors and private sector 
    • Use key opinion leaders as advocacy champions
  • On International Women’s Day, WACI Health led a Twitter storm to celebrate women’s achievements and reinforce a commitment to women’s equality. Messages on how the GFF can best empower women and make health services more equitable and accessible were shared and donors were tagged in an effort to advocate for more funding of GFF activities.
  • WACI Health hosted a live Twitter chat to enhance youth engagement in GFF resource mobilization efforts. Youth leaders shared their thoughts on what the GFF represents for them and what the GFF has helped achieved in their country. They recorded individual messages inviting the Head of State in their respective countries to invest in the GFF to make health services more accessible to women, children, and adolescents. Read more here.

News: 

  • “44 countries have COVID vaccination rates under 20% despite supply increase” from Axios
  • “Zika and dengue among viruses that could spark the ‘next pandemic’” from The Telegraph
  • “Survey shows public want vaccines shared based on need and equity” from Gavi
  • “No public health without planetary health” published in The Lancet
  • “The TB pandemic was forgotten as the world fought Covid” from The East African
  • “Malawi: New Method Contributes to TB Reduction in Malawi” from All Africa
  • “Botswana Approves Texas-Made COVID Vaccine, Manufacturing Plant” from VOA
  • “Establishing sustainable vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa vital to continent’s health security” from The Guardian (Nigeria)

Resources and Blogs:  

Events and Opportunities:

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