Dr. Christoph Benn is the Director for Global Health Diplomacy at the Joep Lange Institute in Geneva. He has been a member of the founding board at the creation of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in 2002. As Director of External Relations of the Global Fund from 2003–2018, he has been responsible for mobilizing the financial resources for the partnership through the management of its regular replenishment cycles and spearheading innovative approaches to resource mobilization including (Product) RED and Debt2Health. He has been a co-founder of several Friends of the Global Fund organizations including Japan, the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific that have provided critical advocacy support for the Global Fund. Under his leadership, the Global Fund has mobilized pledges and contributions of more than USD 50 billion. He served as a senior advisor to the Global Fund’s recent 6th replenishment mobilizing an additional USD 14 billion for 2020-2022. Prior to the Global Fund, Christoph worked as a clinician and public health specialist in the United Kingdom, Germany and as a Doctor-in-Charge of a rural hospital in Tanzania. At the Joep Lange Institute Christoph is focusing on accelerating UHC in LMICs through innovations in digital health and in international health financing. He has more than 30 years of experience in global health with a special focus on health systems and Primary Health Care, AIDS, and infectious diseases, and results-based financing. In his various functions, Christoph has been managing political relations with governments, multilateral organizations, Civil Society, and the Private Sector. Christoph is a physician with an MD from the University of Giessen (Germany), a Diploma in Tropical Medicine&Hygiene from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
