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| President Peter Mutharika signed Global Fund Partnership with Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund |
The Malawi Government has refuted information sourced by the Parliamentary Committee on Nutrition, HIV and AIDS that the country has delayed in the use of the Global Fund money and there is risk of under-utilisation of the approved funds.
The entourage from the Ministry of Health lead by Secretary in the Ministry, McPhail Magwira and Chief of Health Services, Charles Mwansambo has enlighten the Parliamentary committee that there has been no delays in the use of the funds but Government has only faced a challenge of instituting the Project Implementation Unit (PIU).
On Wednesday, the team from Ministry of Health was meeting with the committee on issues on Nutrition, HIV and AIDS but the clarification on the issues followed worries expressed by the committee it got information that there has been no action on the ground in terms of use of approved funds by the principle recipients and the committee feared risk that the country will under-utilise the funds come 2017.
Responding to this question, Mr. McPhail Magwira, Secretary in the Ministry of Health said the Ministry has already started utilizing the money, however, he explained that the only area that delayed in the Global Fund programme was putting together of Project Implementation Unit (PIU) and not utilisation of the money.
"Despite the fact that the unit is not in place, we were allowed to proceed to utilize the funds. So, the fact that the PIU is not in place and despite the fact that we needed to start in January, but in terms of resource utilization we have already started.” confirmed Magwira
He told the Committee that although it took long to put together PIU, Government has now resolved the problem as it has put together all the necessary staff there.
"This was the case as most of the members of staff from PIU are seconded from Government except for the very few posts. We have already advertise the posts but in the interim we have also made arrangement for the Project Manager to come in to put the unit in place." said explained
Chef of Health Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Charles Mwansambo shared Magwira sentiments by further assuring the committee that the money from Global Fund have been used.
“Indeed we were supposed to start from the 1st of January and am pleased to report that the Global Fund has provided moneys to Ministry of Health and to other principle recipients, ActionAid and World Vision.So the funds are in the country and were transferred in December for the activities that we said we are going to do that period.
So, there is no reason to worry, the funds have already started to come in for specific activities that were targeted for the first months that were slightly delayed because of PIU." He said
Cementing on Magwira's justification of the delays in organising PIU office, Mwansambo explained to the committee that the delay to organise the PIU chiefly originated from the reason that non of the Government officers qualified from the interviews that were conducted for the post of managing PIU following advice from Global Fund that PIU management should be seconded from Government because from experience elsewhere, such officers stay even if Global Fund moves out.
“So, we went back to Global fund to ask them if we could recruit from outside, now, they have given us ok." He said adding "So, some of the people will be recruited from outside the market while the supporting team will be from Government. That is why it was slightly delayed."
Mwansambo also downplayed fears that National Aids Commission (NAC) is facing problems after it failed to become a principle recepient of Global Fund.
He said "The main role of NAC is to coordinate national response and they are ably doing that with support from various donors including World Bank, so, they are able to play that function."
“With the new funding model, the Global fund did advise countries to go for dual tracking where you get a principal recipient from Government and another from non-governmental organization. So, for Malawi since most of the biomedical part was being conducted by the Ministry of Health, when they advertised for the principle recipient, Ministry of Health applied and NAC applied also. Of course, since we were the ones implementing, we had a competitive advantage over NAC and that is why we got the funding but at present the other two principle recipients are ActionAid and World Vision and these are implementing the non-biomedical part of the project." He said
"So, I don’t think NAC is at disadvantage at present or there are problems at present." Added Mwansambo
Malawi and the Global Fund strengthened their partnership by signing grants worth more than US$332 million in October last year, to expand treatment and prevention for HIV, TB and Malaria and build resilient and sustainable systems for health.
The signing brought the total Global Fund commitment to Malawi to US$616 million from 2014 to 2017.
The HIV and TB grants total US$298 million and the malaria grants US$34 million. Malawi has also committed US$30 million of its domestic resources for procurement of health products and to strengthen health systems.
Investments through the grant will enable Malawi to provide HIV treatment for 745,000 patients by the end of 2017, which represents 70 percent of the people in need. The grants will be implemented jointly by the Ministry of Health and two non-governmental organizations, World Vision and ActionAid who will implement the grants directly, strengthening the community-based response to the diseases.
