20 May 2002
South Africa has pledged a US$2 million (about R20 million) contribution to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang announced at the recent meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva. (WHA was held from 13th - 18th of May 2002)
South Africa will be joining six other African countries that have made pledges to contribute to the Global Fund since it became operational at the end of last year.
Dr Tshabalala-Msimang said it was crucial that more resources were mobilized to sustain world response to these three major communicable diseases. She also expressed gratitude to many other countries, both developed and developing, that have made their contributions to the Fund. This includes the business sector, foundations and private individuals.
South Africa is one of the countries whose application to the Global Fund was successful when the first round of applications were considered by the board of the Fund last month. SA will be receiving a total amount of R1.8 billion over the next two years for funding of HIV/AIDS and TB programmes.
Dr Tshabalala-Msimang has, however, raised a concern that the resources that are currently in the custody of the Fund will not be sufficient to meet the need to address AIDS, TB and Malaria. When the Global Fund was initiated, the UN Secretary General set a target of 7 - 10 billion US dollars. An amount of about 2 billion US dollars has been pledged thus far.
"Beyond the actual cash contributions to date, another matter of concern is the sustainability of the Fund. It would be a great disaster is the Fund were to finance programmes in countries for one or two years, and then leave those countries high and dry. We must advocate for more resources and ensure greater sustainability and accountability of the Fund," said Dr Tshabalala-Msimang.
South Africa also joined other African countries at the World Health Assembly that were calling for a more equitable representation of developing countries, in particular those with the greatest burden of the three diseases in all the structures of the Fund such as the Board, the Secretariat and the Technical Working Groups.
Chaired by Botswana, the African group of countries called for improvement in communication and improved interaction between the Fund and various countries. Better communication would address problems with regard to compilation and submission of proposals, review of these applications and the appropriate way of communicating the outcomes of the review process.
The African Health Ministers also agreed that proposals that were submitted to the Fund without going through the Country Co-ordinating Mechanism (CCM) should be sent back to the CCM for processing before the second round of applications are considered by the Fund later this year. This decision applies to all applications irrespective of whether they were favourably considered by the Fund or not. The Ministers believe that the CCM will ensure that all proposals are in line with and they enhance the African countries' response to these diseases.
Issued by the Ministry of Health