Global Fund 'officials' come and go. It is now up to the two Principal Recipients UNOPS and Save the Children to get plans in place to make the money work.
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Global Fund could triple ART coverage over five years: UN
Myanmar Times
Volume 26, No. 511
A NEW grant from the Global Fund could see a threefold increase in the percentage of HIV-infected people receiving lifesaving antiretroviral treatment (ART), the head of UNAIDS in Myanmar said last week.
“Right now only about 20 percent of people who need treatment are being covered by ART programs and hopefully in five years, about 60pc of the needs would be covered,” Dr Sun Gang, the UNAIDS country coordinator for Myanmar, told The Myanmar Times on February 16. “But certainly not the full ART needs [will be covered]. This country still needs more [financial assistance] … there’s a long way to go.”
Myanmar appears certain to miss Millennium Development Goal target 6B, which mandates universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by the end of this year, but the 60pc figure would represent a significant achievement given present coverage.
However, it is dependent on the Round 9 Global Fund HIV grant being extended to the maximum five-year period and Dr Sun Gang described it as a “best-case scenario”.
“The extension of the initial two-year grant for a further three years is based on the success of the initial implementation,” he said.
In its Round 9 proposal to the Global Fund, the Myanmar Country Coordinating Mechanism targeted having 19,348 people on ART after the first year of the Global Fund grant and 43,538 after the fifth year.
It is estimated 75,000 people are in desperate need of ART in Myanmar.
In November, the Global Fund board approved all three of the country’s Round 9 grant proposals and set an upper funding limit of more than US$110 million over the first two years of the grants.
Myanmar will receive a maximum of $46.5 million for its HIV proposal, while up to $33.8 million and $30.6 million will be provided to fight malaria and tuberculosis respectively. This could rise to $142 million for the HIV grant alone if it is extended to the maximum five years.
Dr Sun Gang said the recent visit of two Global Fund representatives had “helped Myanmar to start the grant negotiation process … [the] explanation and clarity given has been very helpful”.
On February 11, Global Fund project manager Mr Chrishan Thuraisingham and project officer Ms Izaskun Gaviria met Health Minister Dr Kyaw Myint in Nay Pyi Taw to discuss the grant signing process.
Ms Marcela Rojo, a spokesperson for the Global Fund, said the purpose of the visit was to “go through administrative arrangements for the signing of the grants … including discussions of practical issues such as access to the field” and timelines for grant signing.
The Global Fund representa-tives also informed the relevant parties that the Swiss Tropical Institute had been selected as the Local Fund Agent (LFA), the entity that the Global Fund hires to oversee, verify and report on grant performance in each country.
Ms Rojo told The Myanmar Times via email the Global Fund expected the grants to be signed in the third quarter of the year.
“The next step in the process is for the Principal Recipients – UNOPS and Save the Children – to prepare documents, such as workplans and timelines, to present to the LFA at the end of March or beginning of April,” Ms Rojo said. “We have made a significant step forward.”
Global Fund rules stipulate the grant agreement has to be signed by November, one year after the Global Fund board announced the Round 9 results. Myanmar’s grant proposal targets a January 1, 2011 start date for program implementation.
“The timeline is still preliminary and still being fine-tuned,” Dr Sung Gang said. “All this effort is leading step-by-step to having all the documents prepared [to sign the grant], leading to the resources coming into the country to help the people who are in need.
“Much [of the funding] is for literally life-saving services that will definitely help to relieve some of the suffering that is happening in Myanmar.”
Dr Sun Gang said the Global Fund secretariat had shown “good support” during the Round 9 proposal-writing process.
“There were visits by senior staff members, including Mr William Patton, the director of country programs, who visited with a team in February 2009. Since then there have been two more visits, including last week’s, and this shows a good commitment from the Global Fund secretariat and that Myanmar’s preparation is technically sound,” he said.
The result was a HIV proposal that was one of only five placed in the highest recommendation category by the Global Fund’s Technical Review Panel (TRP), an achievement Dr Sun Gang described as “quite rare”.
A recent report by Aidspan, an organisation that describes itself as “an independent watchdog of the Global Fund” and also publishes a free newsletter, the Global Fund Observer, praised Myanmar’s Round 9 HIV proposal for its “thorough understanding of the operating environment, health system and nature of the epidemic” and its addressing of gender issues.
http://mmtimes.com/2010/news/511/n51102.html
