Burma/Myanmar: Global Fund to return?
27 July 2009
By Alex Ellgee - Democratic Voice of Burma www.dvb.no.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which withdrew from Burma in 2005, is considering returning to the country in a move that would inject millions of dollars into tripling the amount of people receiving treatment for AIDS.
In 2005, the Global Fund terminated its $US19,200,000 grant for HIV/AIDS in Burma after the government imposed restrictions on the travel of its staff, which meant they would be unable to visit grant implementation areas.
The latest proposal is yet to be passed, but it is expected that the organisation will make a final decision at the end of August.
Mark Farmaner, from Burma Campaign UK, believes however that it is unlikely the Global Fund will accept the proposal.
“Burma has travel restrictions on NGO workers like no other country in the world,” he said. “Nothing has changed since The Global Fund left Burma so I can’t see how they could return,” he said.
It is estimated that 240,000 people are infected by HIV and 76,000 are in need of life-saving anti-retroviral treatment. Of those, only 18,000 are receiving proper medical treatment and as a result 25,000 people are dying per year.
The cost of treatment equates to $30 per month which is the same as the average Burmese salary, leaving many outside of its reach.
Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) has been providing treatment to around 12,000 people across Burma and small NGOs have covered around 4,000. The government provides for 1,800.
After the Global Fund withdrew, several donors launched the Three Diseases Fund to provide funds to prevent TB, HIV and Malaria. The Three Diseases Fund is managed by the UN Office for Project Services and allocates funds from donors including AusAID, DFID, the European Community, and the governments of the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
It is only in the last ten years that the government has acknowledged the HIV epidemic in Burma. Aid groups have criticised the regime for not investing enough money to tackle the epidemic, with only 0.3 percent of the annual budget being spent on healthcare.
The departure of The Global Fund from Burma left MSF as the main provider of anti-retroviral drugs and treatment.
In its ‘Preventable Fate’ report, MSF explained that there was a substantial lack of funding for HIV treatment which was “pushing it to its limit and had to make the painful decision to drastically cut the number of patients they could treat.”
The Burmese government has often been criticised for its treatment of NGO workers and lack of transparency.
Following cyclone Nargis in May 2008, the Burmese government delayed aid into the country and was then accused by NGOs of profiting from the increased funding.
Aid groups criticised the government for profiting from the margin between the dollar and the value of the Foreign Exchange Certificates, which NGOs had to withdraw money in.
