Médecins Sans Frontières Perspectives on Wambo.org

Wambo.org, launched this year by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), is described as “a global marketplace offering a growing range of quality-assured, lifesaving medicines and health-related commodities at competitive, transparent prices.” Under development by the Global Fund since October 2014, it is already available to Global Fund grant recipients with a stated aim of being made available to public health partners.

The Global Fund is a critical actor within the public health community to improve the affordability and availability of medical tools – in particular medicines and diagnostics – for low- and middle-income countries. Today the Global Fund spends approximately USD 2 billion per year, and is one of the largest purchasers of drugs to treat HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.The Secretariat of the Global Fund intends for wambo.org to play a central role in the procurement efforts of the Global Fund and beyond.

MSF still has a range of questions and concerns regarding wambo.org that have been raised to the Secretariat. In the last year, as wambo.org has been gradually introduced, other entities and actors have also started to examine wambo.org, including potential donors and internal accountability and oversight functions in the Global Fund, such as the Technical Evaluation Reference Group (TERG) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

This note summarises some of the key questions, concerns and reflections based on Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s understanding of wambo.org.