Global Fund Publishes Terms Of Reference Of Equitable Access Initiative

An initiative spearheaded by the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to ensure equitable access to medicines in particular in middle-income countries now has a dedicated webpage publishing the terms of reference of the initiative. Also available is the list of high-level participants who attended the first meeting of the initiative held last week.

The Equitable Access Initiative (EAI) website is here.

According to its terms of reference [pdf], the initiative aims “to develop a new framework to classify countries by key components of equitable access to health in order to better inform national and international decision making processes on health and development.”

A quiet first meeting of the initiative was held in Geneva on 23 February (IPW, Public Health, 25 February 2015), convening a wide range of high-ranking professionals. The list of members of the EAI Expert Panel is available here [pdf].

Convening partners of the EAI are: the World Health Organization, the World Bank, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, UNAIDS, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNITAID and the Global Fund, according to the website. The Wellcome Trust is listed as a co-sponsor at the end of the terms of reference.

According to the terms of reference, the EAI “will work inclusively with a Panel of Experts, modelling groups and representatives of all key stakeholders to analyse and propose a new health classification framework, including relevant indicators.”

The EAI is expected to explore how to measure ” i) countries’ capacity for co-financing; ii) in-country institutional capacity; and iii) equitable access to health services and technologies as key components of health capacity that are replicable and can be used as coefficients for a new framework.”

A Global Fund press release from the meeting said, “Relying solely on gross national income to determine investment priorities in global health has been increasingly questioned by partners,” as countries classified as middle-income countries are often faced with a high disease burden requiring substantial resources.

According to the release, the Equitable Access Initiative “seeks to establish a new way to measure a country’s health needs and capacities, aimed towards sustainability, and in addition to propose nuanced health classifications that go beyond traditional economic metrics such as national income levels and are more relevant for better health outcomes.”

“The initiative will be firmly grounded in human rights and will uphold the need for zero discrimination in access to medicines,” it said.

Image Credits: Flickr – Global Fund