Investment Technical Guidance

Global Fund grant activities are required to adhere to normative technical guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and relevant partners. For this purpose, the Global Fund develops key resources to guide investments. These include information notes, briefing notes, technical briefs and updates that recommend priority interventions and encourage strategic investments to achieve impact in alignment with the 2023-2028 Global Fund Strategy.

For Grant Cycle 8 (GC8), the Global Fund is publishing essential reading documents which are labeled “core guidance”. Other specialized documents are labeled as “supplemental guidance” and are available to further support applicants and implementers.

In addition to these documents, the Information Sessions pages include information on information session registration, recordings of information sessions, slides, and other resources to assist applicants in applying for funding.  

In GC8, investment guidance more clearly outlines areas of investment that are high priority, those the Global Fund is unlikely to fund, or that require strong justification to allow countries to decide accordingly. The documents emphasize how to optimize investments and drive cost effectiveness to maximize results.

Countries should identify priorities for integration of HIV, TB and malaria services into primary healthcare and across health and community systems pillars. Community, human rights and gender considerations should be planned holistically and specific investments should enable equitable access to services.

Two other areas of attention include health product management for all essential medicines from all sources (including non-grant procurement) and support for introduction and scale-up of innovations.

Areas of focus to transition from Global Fund financing include: health worker remuneration, program management and maintenance and operating costs for equipment and infrastructure. Countries should progressively use domestic financing for essential diagnostics and medicines such as first line treatment for HIV and TB, drugs for malaria in pregnancy and malaria rapid diagnostic tests.