Global Fund will ensure that HIV patients get antiretroviral Drugs

Accra, Sept. 7, GNA - Professor Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund (GF), has restated the Fund's commitment to ensuring that people infected with HIV are put on anti-retroviral drugs to prolong their life.

Prof Kazatchkine expressed concern that majority of people living with the disease in developing countries, especially in Africa, did not have access to drugs to help control it.

He was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), after he led a delegation of the Fund on a familiarisation tour of the Fevers Unit of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, where HIV/AIDS patients are on admission.

The seven-member delegation of the GF was in Ghana to attend the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which ended last Thursday. Realising the harmful effects of AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB), and Malaria on mankind, the United Nations and the Eight Industrialised Nations (G8) established the Fund in 2002 to provide complementary resources for the management and control of those diseases. Prof Kazatchkine tasked governments to give priority attention to the health needs of their people, adding that health was a fundamental human right that should not be toyed with.

Ms Nina Ingenkamp, Performance and Evaluation officer of the GF, told the GNA that the Fund had so far committed a total of 11.4 billion dollars globally towards the control of AIDS, TB and Malaria.

She said since 2003, Ghana alone has received about 200 million dollars, and commended the country for her outstanding performance in the fight against the three diseases.

Mr Manu Sarpong, Administrator of the Fund's Principal Recipients in Ghana, said apart from building partnerships among stakeholders, one of the key principles of the GF was to support massive scaling up of interventions within the framework of National Strategic Plans. During an interaction with members of Wisdom Association, a private support group at the hospital, its President, Mr Kofi Ampong, appealed

to Prof Kazatchkine to make funds available to the Association to enable it to expand its activities.