Government must scale up HIV/AIDS funding - NASA

The government has been asked to scale up its funding of HIV/AIDS prevention programmes to sustain the fight against the spread of the infection.

Ghana has been relying heavily on donor support for the implementation of programmes to control the disease, and this is raising serious questions about sustainability.

The call is contained in the Ghana National AIDS Spending Assessment (NASA) report that critically examined the level and flow of resources into the HIV/AIDS campaign in year 2014.

It put the total expenditure on the disease’s related activities for that year at US$68,843,316, and out of this figure, 66 per cent was contributed by multi-lateral organisations.

The report indicated that funds from the government accounted for just about 7 per cent with the remaining 27 coming from the private sector.

“This is consistent with the trend in the nation and other sub-Saharan African countries which rely heavily on donor funding to finance their HIV and AIDS-related activities”, it added.

It underlined the need for the government to strengthen its efforts at mobilising and channelling more funds into the campaign against the disease.

The report added that it was in the nation’s own interest to ensure quality services and availability of antiretroviral drugs for infected persons.

Ghana, it said, could not fail its commitment to tackle the phenomenon, and that it needed to up its game amid the global recession and limited sources of funding for HIV/AIDS-related programmes.