Global Fund Cuts Uganda's HIV/AIDS Funding

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria cut HIV program funds for Uganda during the agency's sixth round of grant announcements Friday. However, the country will receive TB program funding, according to the fund's Web site.

"As you will see, Uganda's TB proposal has been approved with a two-year amount of $10.7 million and a five-year (so far disbursed) amount of over $26 million," Nicolas Demey, a fund spokesperson, wrote in an e-mail.

Overall, the fund's board approved 85 grants totaling $847 million. This expanded the Global Fund's commitment to $6.6 billion for over 460 grants to disease-related programs in 136 countries.

Over the weekend, there were reports that Uganda was certain to lose the HIV funds because it was apparent the government would fail to act on last year's mismanaged Global Fund HIV/AIDS grant by a Nov. 15 deadline. A government probe into the matter found massive implementation failures and mismanagement, and it implicated three finance ministers who were later fired. The Global Fund transferred oversight of its HIV/AIDS allocation in Uganda to the audit firm Ernst & Young.

"What we were supposed to do was draw up a long-term arrangement for the management of the fund," said Dr. Richard Nduhuura, state health minister. Nduhuura and Health Minister Dr. Stephen Malinga both left Sunday for the fund's Geneva headquarters to resolve outstanding issues.

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