The ACB Board met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from August 2-3, 2018. The meeting aimed to (i) review of the governance framework, (ii) do the formal handover of the leadership and (iii) schedule next the Annual Consultative Meeting (ACM) among others. During the meeting, H.E. Hon. Dr. Kebede Worku – Board Member for East and Southern Africa (ESA) and the current Minister of State for Health of Ethiopia – led the meeting. During the meeting Dr. Worku was selected as the Chairperson of the ACB Board with Professor Pascal Niamba as Vice Chair for a period of one year. Thereafter, Hon. Dr. Olly Ilunga, Minister of Health in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would be the Chairperson and Major General Dr. Gerald Gwinji will be the Vice chairperson.
The meeting decided that the Annual Consultative Meeting (ACM) will take place on 18-19 October 2018, in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. The ACM will be an opportunity for the African Constituencies to take an inventory of what has happened over the last twelve months since the last ACM and to deliberate on emerging issues and to build consensus on policy issues coming up during the 40th Global Fund Board Meeting. Grant allocation methodology, innovative financing, finding TB missing cases, HIV prevention, Malaria resurgence, 6th replenishment, RSSH review findings, etc. will be amongst key issues to be discussed in the next Board meeting.
The Board meeting was also an opportunity for a formal handover of the leadership of the ACB Board by Dr. David Apuuli to Hon. Dr. Kebede Worku. As announced in our last article, the African Constituencies have renewed their leadership for 2018-2020. Dr. Apuuli, Chairman of the last Board took advantage of this meeting to review the past two years presenting key achievements and challenges.
In addition to deliberating over the progress the joint African Constituency has made over the last one year, the meeting discussed pertinent issues not in the least including the review of the governance framework and the strategic repositioning of the organization following interest from other global health mechanisms for the ACB to provide similar policy support to African representatives on their Boards.
