Message from the Minister of Health & Global Fund Board Chair 

Tenayistilign -  and a very warm welcome to our Ethiopia. It is a tremendous honor and an extraordinary opportunity for us to be hosting this 20^th Board Meeting of the Global Fund on the eve of 2010 – a pivotal year for Ethiopia, the Global Fund and all partners in the field of global health.  

We hope very much that most of you will have a chance to go on the site visits organized in various parts of our diverse country and that you will find this booklet to be a useful resource.  The visits and your interactions with community members and those at the forefront of service delivery, we hope will allow you to have a first hand view of the tremendous impact which support from the Global Fund and our diverse partners is having on the individual lives of millions of Ethiopians and entire communities across our nation.

We hope also that they will enable you to see, in more concrete terms, what we mean by the indispensability of an ‘integrated health system strengthening approach’ to expanding access to life-saving AIDS, TB and malaria services.  Health system strengthening is now top on the agenda of all countries in the African region who are now intensely engaged in scaling up their national responses to the pandemics and accelerating their efforts towards the MDGs. And so this occasion provides implementing constituencies as a whole, and AU Member States in particular, a unique opportunity to jointly and forcefully articulate the need for continued investments to build on the important gains already being made to this end, thanks to the support of Global Fund and all our partners.

Ethiopia is particularly fortunate to have firmly secured two of the most crucial ingredients for success at this critical juncture in our fight against the pandemics – strong country ownership backed by political commitment as well as the steadfast support of our diverse and dedicated partners.  Our Government’s commitment to health has, in fact, never been stronger. And it is this commitment together with the sustained shore-up of our partners that leads me to believe that despite the challenges ahead, we now stand to make a significant and lasting difference in the health of our people.  I am confident also that this genuine spirit of partnership will help us find common ground in resolving the many important issues we have on the agenda for this particular Board meeting -- the outcome of which will be critical to the continued success of the Global Fund.  I look forward to fruitful discussions over the coming days and wish you all a very pleasant stay in Ethiopia.

Yours in partnership,

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (PhD)
Minister of Health, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Board Chair, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria