"Quo Vadis, Global Health" Fireside Chat III
The Global Fund: responding to emergencies and building health security
Save the Date and join our next virtual Fireside Chat! We warmly invite you to the third edition of our discussion series "Quo Vadis, Global Health?"
Monday, July 07, 2025
10:00–11:00 CEST
Please register here: https://forms.gle/XmKH97w4k4yKchru5
Widespread conflicts and security issues are having an increasing impact on progress against HIV, TB and malaria. Conflict makes people more vulnerable to infectious diseases and disrupts the delivery of health services. Like climate-related and other disasters, conflict can erase decades of progress in disease prevention and control and create the conditions for new or resistant pathogens to emerge.
The health impacts of conflicts and climate disasters are severe: destroying infrastructure, disrupting logistics and supply chains, causing mass forced displacement and depriving people of vital medicines and health services. Migrants, refugees and internally displaced people are separated from health services and often live in overcrowded temporary accommodation, environments where infectious diseases spread rapidly. Untreated diseases can lead to more severe illnesses or death and the development of drug-resistant infections. These risks are only increasing with the current funding uncertainty.
In this context, the Global Fund plays a critical role. Backed by donor support, it responds swiftly to emergencies that threaten progress against HIV, TB, and malaria. As the largest multilateral provider of health and community system grants, investing approximately US$2 billion annually, the Global Fund helps countries build more climate-resilient, crisis-ready systems that reach the poorest and most marginalized populations. Notably, 37% of its funding is allocated to countries operating in challenging environments characterized by ongoing crisis, i.e. countries or regions that experience disease outbreaks, natural disasters, armed conflicts and/or weak governance. Additionally, the Global Fund supports countries facing exceptional emergencies that put health programs at risk, such as outbreaking conflicts, extreme weather events, mass displacement, and disease outbreaks like Ebola or COVID-19, through agile reprogramming and its Emergency Fund, which provides rapid, flexible additional financial support to sustain essential health services during crises.
By responding to these emergencies, the Global Fund strengthens global health security, also protecting populations in donor countries, including Germany, from cross-border health threats. In a world where diseases know no borders and pandemics carry immense economic costs, investing in the Global Fund is both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity.
As part of the Quo vadis, Global Health? series, dedicated to exploring political and structural challenges to global health in times of geopolitical disruption, this event will examine the Global Fund’s emergency response approach and its pivotal role in safeguarding global health security. It will highlight the urgent need to ensure the Fund’s continued capacity to support countries in fragile and unstable contexts through a successful 8th Replenishment, aimed at mobilizing resources for the 2027–2029 funding cycle.
We look forward to exploring these dynamics, and the role of the Global Fund in addressing them, together with representatives from civil society from Bangladesh, representatives from the International Organization of Migration (IOM) in Jordan, and representatives of the Global Fund.
Invited participants
- Francesco Moschetta, manager of the Implementation and Challenging Operating Environment Team, the Global Fund
- Akramul Islam, BRAC, Bangladesh
- Syed Arif Hussain, program manager for IOM mission for Jordan
Moderated by Johanna Fipp (Action against AIDS Germany) and Alexandra Gurinova (Deutsche Aidshilfe)
Welcome and closing remarks by Tanja Siebenbrodt (German Foundation for World Population)
