Published: 29 January 2003
A veteran of the Italian AIDS response and senior official of the Italian Red Cross, Dr. Massimo Barra, has been selected as a member of the board of the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. He will represent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from developed countries for a period of one year.
Barra’s appointment was confirmed at a board meeting in Geneva this week (29-31 January). The board’s functions include advocating for the Fund as well as setting policies and strategies; making funding decisions and representing various constituencies including the NGO community. One of Barra’s roles will be to advocate for the participation of community representatives in the design, implementation and evaluation of all Global Fund policies and programmes.
“Civil society participation has been key to every successful HIV/AIDS response, but governments and the international community tend to ignore this obvious fact. Communities and volunteers are marginalized when they should be recognised as the backbone to an effective response and this is a waste of resources and opportunity,” said Barra. “Among my challenges this year will be to ensure the voice of civil society is heard when and where decisions are made and to build partnerships among NGO’s.”
As a member of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and its network of organisations which has a volunteer membership of 97 million people, Barra brings valuable experience and knowledge of civil society and its response to HIV/AIDS.
He has worked for 20 years on HIV/AIDS in Italy. He is the founder and director of “Villa Maraini”, an Italian Red Cross Foundation which has provided direct assistance to more than 25,000 injecting drug users. Sharing needles is a major mode of HIV transmission in many developed countries.
Barra has also been instrumental in building the European Red Cross and Red Crescent Network on AIDS (ERNA) which now has the capacity to reach into Eastern Europe - where the rate of infection is growing fastest in the world. ERNA has also, in partnership with the European Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, promoted active engagement with affected communities in the region.
The purpose of the Global Fund is to attract, manage and disburse additional resources through a new public-private partnership to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria by supporting technically sound and cost-effective interventions. The Fund has received pledges to date of US$ 2.2 billion.
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