engage more fully with the Paris Principles for AIDS Effectiveness

Global health initiatives are defined as ‘ a blueprint for financing, resourcing, coordinating and/or implementing disease control across at least several countries in more than one region of the world’. They may be bilateral (e.g. US PEPFAR), multilateral (e.g. World Bank MAP), or public-private partnerships (Global Fund) aid mechanisms. This first systematic review of published and unpublished reports from 2002 to 2007 examines the effects of these three initiatives on national policy; coordination and planning; stakeholder involvement; disbursement, absorptive capacity, and management; monitoring and evaluation; and human resources. It suggests that these initiatives, each with different effects, initially often had negative effects, revealing country system weaknesses. As lessons were learned, the effects on health systems were more positive. The principal recommendations of this review are first, that global health initiatives, recipient donor countries, civil society organisations, and technical agencies alike should

engage more fully with the Paris Principles for AIDS Effectiveness

. Secondly, country and global policy makers and donors should demand and fund the acquisition of better evidence, including more analytical health policy and health systems evaluation. This article should be very high on your reading list!