Key Capacity Development partners
Strong partnerships are the cornerstone of UNDP’s work to strengthen systems for health. In its support to countries UNDP works closely with other United Nations entities, development organizations, civil society organizations, the private sector, academia and key populations to develop resilient and sustainable systems for health. This page highlights some of UNDP’s key partners for health and outlines how collaboration, drawing on the comparative advantages, can facilitate greater impact and sustainability. At the regional and global levels, UNDP helps to drive the health agenda through its participation and thought leadership in a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives. This includes collaboration with 12 multilateral agencies under the SDG 3 Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All.
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
UNDP has worked in partnership with the Global Fund since its inception in 2002 to implement grants to tackle the epidemics of HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria in some of the most challenging operating environments. UNDP has served as interim Principal Recipient of the Global Fund grants in 53 countries since 2002, supporting governments to implement large-scale health programmes, strengthen systems for health and reach marginalized and hard-to-reach populations with critical services, often in some of the most challenging country contexts.
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UNDP’s partnership with the Global Fund focuses on three interlinked objectives: 1) supporting implementation, 2) developing the capacity of national entities to assume the Principal Recipient (PR) role as soon as circumstances permit, and 3) strengthening the policy and programme quality of the Global Fund-related work. Through this approach, UNDP has successfully transitioned the PR role to national entities in over 30 countries since 2002, including for several regional grants. Cumulatively, the partnership has contributed to saving 7.3 million lives and has also helped 56 million people to receive counselling and testing for HIV, 967,000 TB cases to be treated, 88.5 million cases of malaria to be treated and 77.4 million bednets to be distributed. 1.4 million people currently receive HIV treatment through UNDP’s partnership with the Global Fund. Learn more here.
World Health Organization
On 4 May 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNDP signed a memorandum of understanding to help support countries to achieve the health-related targets of the 2030 Agenda, with an emphasis on the realization of their commitment to leave no one behind. In current WHO–UNDP collaborations, there is a joint commitment to strengthening country capacity to achieve universal health coverage, supporting multisectoral responses to health emergencies and ensuring the delivery of essential health services in fragile, vulnerable and conflict-affected settings.
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In line with WHO’s leadership on universal health coverage, UNDP and WHO are supporting countries to strengthen the capacity of their health systems, including by addressing the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. UNDP and WHO have developed a joint programme on activating national responses to non-communicable diseases to support countries to develop national responses to their non-communicable disease epidemics by strengthening efforts across sectors. For the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the Convention Secretariat has initiated a project for WHO and UNDP to support: the FCTC 2030 project. This project aims to strengthen the implementation of the WHO FCTC to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
UNDP’s partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) focuses on strengthening health systems to enhance equitable access to vaccines in the poorest countries. It currently has project agreements with Gavi in India, Tajikistan, Zambia and Indonesia, and continues to expand collaboration in others. UNDP India established a strong partnership with Gavi, taking the lead of a grant for rolling out the eVIN , a digital logistics management information system for vaccine cold chains, developing the national monitoring and evaluation framework for immunization and supporting national research.
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In Zambia, collaboration with Gavi started in 2018, when it started providing financial and project mentorship to health districts. They received funding directly from Gavi to strengthen their immunization programmes, improve programme delivery and increase accountability. In recent years, Gavi and the Global Fund have increasingly coordinated their country-level engagement and investments. By leveraging its longstanding partnership with the Global Fund and ongoing health implementation support in countries, UNDP is well positioned to support synergies between Gavi and the Global Fund.
