| The objective of the project is to monitor the financial flows required to address population and HIV/AIDS issues worldwide. This information is needed to assess whether adequate funds are mobilised to ensure the fulfilment of promises made at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD, 1994) and at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS, 2001). The project is commissioned by and carried out in cooperation with UNFPA and -since 1999- with UNAIDS. The information is obtained from annual surveys among donor countries, UN organisations, NGOs and private foundations as well as government departments and local foundations in developing countries and countries in transition. The data obtained from these surveys are stored in a database. The data are used for analyses and to provide information to the international community. At the core of the RF project's activities is the annual survey which collects financial data on population and AIDS expenditures during the previous year at the project/programme level as well as future financial commitments. This information is stored in the RF relational database. The financial flows include expenditures on family planning, reproductive health, sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS) and population policy, and the collection and analysis of demographic data. In response to UNFPA and UNAIDS' needs for more timely data, the RF project has, since 2004, produced estimates and projections of expenditures on population and AIDS activities. As several other institutes have entered the field of global health resource tracking, NIDI involvement will shift from primary data collection at the global level to specialised data collection and the development of methods and techniques to enhance coverage and data quality. Capacity building on regional level will be strengthened by decentralizing the primary data collection to research institutes in the Asian, the African and the Latin American region. At this moment part of the data processing is outsourced to the Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR) in Jaipur. To assure optimal connectivity, NIDI and IIHMR run the same database software. A web-based application will further enhance the data collection procedure and reduce cost. The resources that become available by the outsourcing of primary data collection activities to the outsourcing partners are being used to develop new instruments for data collection and data analysis. They include Reproductive Health Accounts that are fully integrated in a system of National Health Accounts and techniques for collecting information on health expenditures by households. |
