ABUJA – Nigeria has applied for a grant of N323 billion ($890m) from Global Fund to tackle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria diseases in the next three years.
Dozie Ezechukwu, the Executive Secretary of Global Fund’s Country Coordinating Mechanism for Nigeria, made this known on Monday in Abuja, after a Stakeholders’ meeting to discuss the provision of Indirect Cost Recovery for local implementers.
According to him, malaria would gulp 47 per cent of the allocation; HIV, 37 per cent, while TB would take 16 per cent, if the grant is approved.
He said, “We (Nigeria) are going for another round of grant application; Global Fund has even increased our allocation from what it used to be.
“We are going to take $890million (N323bn) for the three diseases in the next three years (2021 to 2023).
“Federal Government is serious about transparency not only on this grant but other resources received from international donor partners.
“We have put in place measures to prevent any mismanagement and also had an agreement on the disbursement.
“Global Fund encourages countries to invest in strengthening health and community systems as they are essential to accelerating progress toward ending the epidemics.’’
Statistics from World Health Organization, WHO, states that Nigeria accounted for 86 million malaria cases globally in 2019 with HIV prevalence rate of 1.4 per cent; and second place of list of countries with highest TB burden in the continent.
The stakeholders’ meeting discussed the performance of previous Global Fund grants, the challenges and their solutions as well as the harmonisation of roadmap for funding request for diseases.
