Shortage of Funds Threatens Fight Against HIV/AIDS - by Desie Heita
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WINDHOEK - An acute scarcity of financial resources is threatening to set back the commendable strides achieved in the global fight against HIV/AIDS pandemic within the next three to five years.
To help ease the financial burden, donor agencies are calling for responsible handling of resources among recipient countries through cost savings, efficiency and non-duplication of HIV programmes. For their part, the donor funding institutions have vowed to keep up the mobilisation of needed funds.
UNAIDS, Global Fund, USA President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and World Bank, there is a very significant financial challenge to the fight against HIV/AIDS.
"There is no enough money on the table for anti-retroviral (ARV) treatments. It is a massive conundrum. The funding gap would start to hit in the period going forward,"¯ Global Fund Director for the Africa Unit, Fareed Abdullah, said during the pre-media briefing for the HIV/AIDS Implementers Conference in Windhoek.
The five-day conference ends on June 14.
Global Fund's current estimate of the financial needs are at US$4 billion between now and 2012 when it would need to fund the replenishment of ARV drugs.
Eastern and southern African nations whose national health expenditures are largely met with donor funding will be severely hit if the financial gap is not averted.
Namibia has already spotted financial gaps in the next five-year plan for the combating of HIV/AIDS.
"It is clear that there is a considerable financial gap,"¯ says the Deputy Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Dr Norbert Forster.
The health ministry is currently carrying out a costing exercise for the fourth medium-term plan covering the period between 2010 and 2015.
Namibia is one of the few Southern African countries able to record successes in the fight against HIV/AIDS because of donor funding that contributes about the 22.4 percent to the national health budget.
Government spending was at 11.3 percent in 2007, and currently sits at 9.4 percent, as of the current national budget for 2009/10.
The scarcity of finances is linked to the global economic crisis, as many developed nations gear up for recession levels last experienced after World War II. Nevertheless, it is on the purses of these very countries that the funding against HIV/AIDS pandemic depends.
The discussion of funding is expected to have prominence during the HIV/AIDS Implementers Conference in Windhoek.
PEPFAR's Assistant US Global AIDS Coordinator, Michele Moloney-Kitts, has asked countries receiving donor funding to step up to the challenge through cost savings and efficiency.
"We cannot afford to have duplications of efforts, we cannot have [ARV] drugs wasted,"¯ says Moloney-Kitts.
Abdullah says it is not just for the donor world to stand aside and watch the situation financial scarcity unfold.
"We cannot tell countries to stop enrolling HIV infected people. It is not an option to say we have no money,"¯ says Abdullah.
Besides funding HIV prevention programmes and ARV treatment, donor money is playing a big role in the supply of health workers in Africa, as the continent faces the migration of health workers to north Europe.
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To help ease the financial burden, donor agencies are calling for responsible handling of resources among recipient countries through cost savings, efficiency and non-duplication of HIV programmes. For their part, the donor funding institutions have vowed to keep up the mobilisation of needed funds.
UNAIDS, Global Fund, USA President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and World Bank, there is a very significant financial challenge to the fight against HIV/AIDS.
"There is no enough money on the table for anti-retroviral (ARV) treatments. It is a massive conundrum. The funding gap would start to hit in the period going forward,"¯ Global Fund Director for the Africa Unit, Fareed Abdullah, said during the pre-media briefing for the HIV/AIDS Implementers Conference in Windhoek.
The five-day conference ends on June 14.
Global Fund's current estimate of the financial needs are at US$4 billion between now and 2012 when it would need to fund the replenishment of ARV drugs.
Eastern and southern African nations whose national health expenditures are largely met with donor funding will be severely hit if the financial gap is not averted.
Namibia has already spotted financial gaps in the next five-year plan for the combating of HIV/AIDS.
"It is clear that there is a considerable financial gap,"¯ says the Deputy Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Dr Norbert Forster.
The health ministry is currently carrying out a costing exercise for the fourth medium-term plan covering the period between 2010 and 2015.
Namibia is one of the few Southern African countries able to record successes in the fight against HIV/AIDS because of donor funding that contributes about the 22.4 percent to the national health budget.
Government spending was at 11.3 percent in 2007, and currently sits at 9.4 percent, as of the current national budget for 2009/10.
The scarcity of finances is linked to the global economic crisis, as many developed nations gear up for recession levels last experienced after World War II. Nevertheless, it is on the purses of these very countries that the funding against HIV/AIDS pandemic depends.
The discussion of funding is expected to have prominence during the HIV/AIDS Implementers Conference in Windhoek.
PEPFAR's Assistant US Global AIDS Coordinator, Michele Moloney-Kitts, has asked countries receiving donor funding to step up to the challenge through cost savings and efficiency.
"We cannot afford to have duplications of efforts, we cannot have [ARV] drugs wasted,"¯ says Moloney-Kitts.
Abdullah says it is not just for the donor world to stand aside and watch the situation financial scarcity unfold.
"We cannot tell countries to stop enrolling HIV infected people. It is not an option to say we have no money,"¯ says Abdullah.
Besides funding HIV prevention programmes and ARV treatment, donor money is playing a big role in the supply of health workers in Africa, as the continent faces the migration of health workers to north Europe.
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