Global fund lifts ban on AIDS grants

Uganda on Friday welcomed the release of a grant package worth US $367 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which the organisation suspended last August amid allegations of mismanagement. The grants were frozen following an independent audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which discovered incidents of inadequate monitoring and accounting of expenditures for one of Uganda's grants to combat HIV. Funding for life-preserving activities, however, was maintained throughout the suspension period. On Thursday, the Global Fund announced that it had lifted its suspension of aid to Uganda following what it called the country's "intensive efforts" to rectify "serious mismanagement" of funding. The package includes two grants to combat HIV/AIDS, two grants targeting malaria and one grant for tuberculosis. "Over the past two months, the Global Fund has been heartened by the intensive efforts of our partners in Uganda," said executive director Richard Feachem. "We are very pleased that the progress made enables us to lift the suspension of Uganda's grants." "The lifting of the ban means that the struggle for our people's health will go on unhindered and that the partnership will continue," said Nsaba Buturo, Uganda's information minister. Buturo maintained that Uganda would remain mindful of the damaging report that culminated in the ban and said that a judicial commission of inquiry set up by the government would continue to work to its "logical conclusion". The government "will not leave any stone unturned as a reassurance to our friends we are doing business with," he said. Before the funds were released, the East African country signed an aide memoire setting out action points for the restructured management of the grants to "ensure effective, accountable and transparent implementation of funded programmes," according to a finance ministry statement. Uganda and Global Fund agreed to establish structures to oversee the implementation of the five grants, including "a self-assessment to ensure effective oversight of the Global Fund grants; a continued involvement of the caretaker management firm Ernst & Young over the next six to nine months to evaluate the quality and efficacy of all sub-recipients of grants; and a restructuring process of the grants to streamline implementation, clarify responsibilities, and simplify grant oversight." Uganda, which had won international praise for its anti-AIDS programmes, has recently come under intense criticism for allegedly backsliding in its commitments. Less than a week after the Global Fund announced its suspension, health campaigners accused the country of succumbing to US pressure to eliminate condom use in favour of promoting sexual abstinence in its strategy against HIV/AIDS. Several NGOs alleged that abstinence-only campaigns were responsible for a massive condom shortage in Uganda that threatened to unravel earlier gains in fighting the spread of the HI virus. The country has denied both the charges and the suggestion that there was any condom shortage. The Global Fund, created in 2002 as a joint public-private clearing house, is a global partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.