Stiff competition for HIV/AIDS money

About 235 NGOs are in the running for millions of dollars to be made available for HIV/AIDS projects from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB.

The proposals are now being examined by a six-person committee, which has to submit its recommendations to the Ministry of Health by 16 July.

"It's a question of competition for resources and recognition," said Alan Ragi, Executive Director of the Kenya AIDS NGOs Consortium (KANCO). At stake are US $26 million.

The committee was formed earlier this week, and comprises representatives from the National AIDS Control Council (NACC), the Ministry of Health, KANCO, the Institute of Community Health and Research, the Social Science and Medicine Africa Network and the Kenya AIDS Watch Institute.

"What we are trying to do is devise criteria, look at which are good proposals, which are addressing the issues, which have the capacity to implement the projects, and which are credible organisations," Ragi told IRIN.

Priority areas to be addressed by the projects are the upscaling and improvement of Voluntary Counselling and Testing, AIDS-related treatment, and education.

Ragi added that the money would not be used to purchase anti-retrovirals, but to improve access to them by educating potential clients and medical staff about their use.

He added that many inquiries into the funding had been made by "spurious NGOs", but that in the end the proposals had been submitted by a wide-range of mostly credible organisations from across Kenya.

On 18 June, the fund and the government of Kenya signed an agreement for grants worth US $52 million to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Of this, US $37 million has been earmarked to fight HIV/AIDS. The money - to be divided up between the NGOs, NACC, and the ministry - has not yet been handed over to the government to start implementing programmes.