Ghana faces HIV funding Challenges as Global Fund cancels funding programme
By Zack Ohemeng Tawiah – Ghana faces difficult times ahead in her effort to reduce HIV infection rate by 50 per cent within the next four years.
This follows withdrawal of financial support by the Global Fund, which has been a major financier until now. The Fund took the decision at its board meeting attended by stakeholders in Accra. Global Fund to Fight AIDS has since 2005 been contributing about 70 per cent of Ghana’s anti-HIV programmes.
Donor countries met in New York last year and pledged to support HIV AIDS, Tuberclosis and Malaria control programmes with 11.7billion US Dollars between 2011 and 2013. More than half of the money was meant for HIV- related activities in its current round of funding known as Round Eleven.
One year after the pledge, however, countries like Holland, Demark, Italy, Belgium, and the European Community have all failed to honor their obligation.
The development is due mainly to the global economic challenges confronting such nations. There are also reports donors are unsatisfied at audited reports on funds beneficiaries had received.
Ghana lost Round 10 funding, and therefore was not indicted in the audited report.
This notwithstanding, her new HIV programs will not receive funding from the Global Fund. The Ghana AIDS Commission recently launched the National HIV Strategic Plan to cover the period up to 2015. It focuses on controlling new infections and reducing mother-child transmission till 2015 among others. Director of Technical Services, Dr Richard Amenyah, says the development presents a catastrophic future to the commission.
He fears the prevailing estimated death of 15 thousand HIV-infected people in Ghana could rise. “This has a lot of implications for a lot of countries including in the developing world Ghana. We have about 115000 Ghanaians who will need HIV treatment by 2015 without which they wouldn’t be alive and because of that, we are very concern that we have not been able to take advantage of Global Fund financing”.
While Global Fund continues to support on-going programmes, the Ghana AIDS Commission, will only hope government fulfil a 100 million dollar promise it made in June. Dr. Amenyah observed the absence of Global Fund support could also affects Ghana in achieving her Millenium Challenge Goals.
We think that the absence of Global Fund support we are going to have serious challenges as we work towards the Millennium Development Goal 4, 5 and 6 by 2015 so it is a very critical time for us”, he explained.
In spite of funding constraints, the commission is intensifying education programmes with emphasis on prevention. “The National Strategic Plan intends to increase prevention of mother-child transmission of HIV services to more than 90 per cent of our mothers who avail themselves in ante-natal clinics”.
