Building to collective impact: the Global Fund support for measuring reduction in the burden of malaria.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was established in 2002 to fund substantial scaling-up coverage of proven and effective interventions to reduce infection, illness, and deaths in those communities most at risk. As of December 2006 the Global Fund has committed $2.6 billion over 5 years to support malaria prevention and control in 85 countries. The Global Fund has worked closely with Roll Back Malaria partners to develop consensus on a set of outcome and impact indicators that have been incorporated into malaria grant agreements. Although the Global Fund has recommended that 5-10% of grant funds be invested in improving the capacity of the national monitoring and evaluation systems, an average of only 3.9% is invested in these systems. Several countries are already demonstrating reductions in the malaria burden. To sustain the scale-up in funding to support malaria interventions, countries must ensure that resources are used now to show robust, systematic, and regular measurement of impact on the burden of malaria.