Global Fund Rebutall

An interesting editorial in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson responds to the criticism the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been receiving recently. As mentioned on this blog, corruption and misuse of funds has led Germany and Sweden to withhold contributions. Gerson counters by pointing out how uncommon such misuse is (about 0.3% of outlays to date- though surely other cases have yet to be detected). More impressively, he states, this is actually a victory for accountability, as it was the Global Fund itself that detected the malfeasance. While eliminating corruption is an important goal, designing mechanisms for detecting such fraud may be more realistic and more essential.