UNITAID is an innovative global health initiative largely financed by a levy on air tickets. Established in 2006 by the governments of Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom, it provides sustainable funding to tackle inefficiencies in markets for medicines, diagnostics and prevention for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in developing countries.
Since 2006 UNITAID has provided funding to implementing partners to carry out two-dozen projects and has committed US$1.5 billion. In September 2011, UNITAID completed its first five years of activity and, against the background of evolving global health architecture and uncertain financial and funding environment, the UNITAID Board commissioned an independent evaluation of its activities to date to help inform its thinking and positioning for the next period. Itad was commissioned to undertake this 5-Year evaluation of UNITAID.
Evaluation objectives
- To assess UNITAID’s effectiveness and determine how to build on its achievements, particularly by overcoming bottlenecks and challenges.
- To examine how UNITAID can play a more effective role in the future in using market-based approaches to improve public health by increasing access to quality products to treat, diagnose and prevent HIV, TB, and malaria in developing countries.
- To feed into UNITAID’s current strategy development process. Itad’s evaluation team, led by Associate Director Sam McPherson, began work on the evaluation in April 2012 and carried out an extensive – but necessarily rapid – evaluation, in order that the report could be fed in to the strategy process scheduled for the latter half of 2012.
The final report was submitted to the UNITAID Board and approved in December 2012 and the findings and recommendations have indeed been fed to the ongoing strategy development process in 2013. See UNITAID’s press release about the evaluation here.
Please find the summary of the report here.
