Strengthening health systems at all levels (community to national)

Strengthening health systems at all levels

L’Initiative’s aim is to achieve universal access to health and to eliminate the HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria pandemics. L’Initative’s main objective is therefore to support and encourage the involvement and performance of an ecosystem of committed individuals, national authorities and organizations working towards responses tailored to all populations affected by the three pandemics. L’Initiative is fully aware that achieving the pandemic targets set out in SDG3 of the 2030 SDGs, which is central to its mandate, is impossible without strengthening health systems, especially in the most fragile states.

Together with the Global Fund partnership, L’Initiative is committed to making health systems, including community-based systems, more welcoming, affordable and accessible, providing better quality, people-centered services.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, health systems must also be more resilient to health crises in order not to reverse progress made on diseases.

Since its inception, L’Initiative has placed strengthening health systems at the heart of its strategy and interventions. L’Initiative’s endeavors can only be effective if it works closely with countries and partners, and first and foremost with the Global Fund.

This  call for proposals launched by L‘Initiative therefore set out to complement investments made by the Global Fund and will finance projects to strengthen health systems aligned with the Global Fund’s strategy (2023-2028)[1].

Since 2016, alongside Expertise France, MEAE and the Global Fund, L’Initiative has committed to ensuring cross-cutting integration of gender in all of its activities, particularly in its calls for projects and in the projects it funds[2]. Strengthening health systems can only be achieved in a sustainable way through gender equality and the respect and promotion of human rights.

In line with international conventions[3], the WHO constitution[4] and the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs’ policy document on human rights and development, “A Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation”, it is also crucial for projects to take a human rights-based approach to project design, implementation and coordination. Projects must ensure that beneficiaries play a central role in their own development[5], and that they promote the implementation of international government obligations to respect, protect and implement human rights. This human rights-based approach must also ensure discrimination is combatted, minorities are respected, that there is equality between women, men, and people who do not adhere to gender norms, and that populations in vulnerable situations are protected, in line with France’s global health strategy.