Global Fund withdraws anti-HIV support to Ghana
Ghana is likely to face 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 at a stakeholders meeting in Accra. The Fund has since 2005 been contributing about 70 per cent towards the country’s anti-HIV programmes.ancier until now.
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 with developing countries being the biggest beneficiaries.
One year after the pledge, however, countries like Holland, Denmark, Italy, Belgium, and the European Community have all failed to honor their obligation due mainly to the global economic challenges confronting them.
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.
Just recently, the Ghana AIDS Commission launched its National HIV Strategic Plan with a focus on controlling new infections and reducing mother-child transmissions till 2015.
Director of Technical Services at the AIDS Commission, Dr Richard Amenyah, says the development presents a catastrophic future to the commission. He fears the prevailing estimated death of 15 thousand HIV-infected persons 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 will fulfill a 100 million dollar promise it made in June.
Dr. Amenyah observed the absence of Global Fund support could also affect Ghana in achieving her Millennium Development Goals.
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