POST 00903E : GLOBAL INITIATIVES FUNDING

POST 00903E : GLOBAL INITIATIVES FUNDING Follow-up on Post 00898E 27 March 2006 _____________________________ Anil Varshney (mailto:[email protected]) from India, submits comments on the presentation of global initiatives funding. ATTENTION! To members on servers with a maximum storage capacity, we recommend that you check regularly your use of space and clean it up. Listserv regularly deletes members when our postings bounce back a certain number of consecutive times on error status for this very reason. _____________________________ Dear Sir, The information provided is good and helpful in understanding the various funding needs and shortfall. To my understanding these are funds that are required directly for the vertical program and exclusively for the eradication support usually being spent via WHO/UNICEF and collaborative partners. Most donors do come forward to provide for the same when UN system is managing the show. Beside the above expenditure there is a very large expenditure incurred by the Country Government which actually does not figure in these projections. These are indirect costs in implementing the eradication programs. I did these calculations few years back while preparing the GOI loan for World Bank for polio eradication in 1999- 2000. The indirect expenditure other than vaccines, operational expenses, training was four times than that of the direct cost calculated for polio eradication, appx 400 million USD. These included human resources time of various staff additionally spent from top to the lowermost worker, public vehicles used ( POL ). Not included, opportunity cost of various volunteers, vehicle and staff of NGOs (not reimbursed in the program), support by agencies and individuals at various levels for the sake of a national programme. It was expected that these special rounds of POLIO immunization will end soon as the NIDs will help in curbing the menace. However it did not happen as expected and the NIDs, from being special drive, became routine 6-weekly activity leading to loss of interest by many supporters who invested their time and money. As these very people stopped supporting various needs, eg making arrangement at the polio booth, this thus raised the direct costs. Within the country there was no way to augment this need which leads to programmatic losses while the UN system is able to collect the funds for a direct program. Some activity needs to be carried out to collect funds from within the country to support the indirect cost by way of seeking donations or grants from in-country large business organizations and philanthropic persons and agencies (till date I haven’t heard big names or even large spiritual trust being approached for such purposes). I am sure if this initiative was taken there would be enough funds for the eradication program. I write this because a similar situation will arise in any new drives of eradication. Countries like India should not depend wholly on external grants but the eradication program must pro-actively generate funds within the country and more so towards the end of programme when various donors find it difficult or have other priorities as mentioned in the article. With kind regards, Dr Anil Varshney New Delhi, India (now a free lance consultant) ______________________________________________________________________________ Visit the TECHNET21 Website at http://www.technet21.org You will find instructions to subscribe, a direct access to archives, links to reference documents and other features. ______________________________________________________________________________ To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to : mailto:[email protected] Leave the subject area BLANK In the message body, write unsubscribe TECHNET21E ______________________________________________________________________________ The World Health Organization and UNICEF support TechNet21. The TechNet21 e-Forum is a communication/information tool for generation of ideas on how to improve immunization services. It is moderated by Claude Letarte and is hosted in cooperation with the Centre de coopération internationale en santé et développement, Québec, Canada (http://www.ccisd.org) ______________________________________________________________________________