By the IRRAWADDY
A visit to Burma this week by a Global Fund delegation could result in a resumption of the fund’s discontinued anti-AIDS program there, according to a report by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The four-member Global Fund delegation led by William Paton, director of country programs, arrived in Burma on Tuesday for a four-day visit. It has since met 29 members of the Myanmar [Burma] Country Coordinating Mechanism (MCCM), headed by Health Minister Kyaw Myint, Xinhua was told by Sun Gang, country coordinator of UNAIDS in Burma.
The MCCM includes 10 representatives of government ministries, four UN agency members and four from international non-governmental organizations.
In August 2005, the Global Fund, the world's leading funder of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, terminated its anti-AIDS program in Burma. The five year program would have cost more than US $98 million.
Global Fund announced that its decision to terminate projects in Burma was made in the light of “the [Burmese] government’s newly established clearance procedures restricting access of the principal recipient [the UN Development Programme], certain sub-recipients, as well as the staff of Global Fund and its agents, to grant-implementation areas.”
In 2006, the Global Fund was replaced by the Three-Diseases (3D) Fund—developed as a substitute by the European Commission, the British, Dutch and Norwegian governments and two anti-AIDS organization in Sweden and Australia.
A five-year 3-D Fund project to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria is projected to cost about $100 million. The 3-D Fund reported recently that it has provided nine non-governmental organizations in Burma this year with a total of $630,000.
Xinhua reported that if this week’s negotiations are successful, the Global Fund is expected to make a formal comeback by 2010.
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