Coordinating Minister, Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate has received and commissioned on behalf of the Federal Government, 72 Toyota Hilux operational vehicles and valuable equipment to support the HIV and Tuberculosis (TB) National Responses and the building of a resilient and sustainable system of healthcare in Nigeria.
The Coordinating Minister, represented by the Minister of State, Dr. Tunji Alausa commissioned the equipment at the handover ceremony organised by Global Fund with the theme “ Making the Global Investments work for Nigeria” recently in Lagos.
According to Professor Pate, the HIV/TB equipment was purchased with funding support by the Global Fund as part of Grant Cycle 6 Investments in the 2021-2023 implementation period while the current donations of 72 Toyota Hilux operational vehicles which would be distributed across 36 states of the country to support state governments’ oversight of integrated HIV /TB programmes in the respective states.
“This is also a fitting step towards the devolution and decentralisation of responsibilities as well as shifting the ownership, coordination and management of the national response from the central government to the states and local government consistent with the 2.0 agreements” he stated.
The Minister stressed that while Nigeria remains one of the highest recipients of the Global Funds Investment and has signed about US $4.8billion grants from the Global Fund including the grant cycle that was signed recently to support the HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria response as well as building resilient and sustainable system for health since 2002, the Global Fund has been and remains a strategic partner to the Federal Government for over two decades.
Pate asserted that Nigeria as a contributor and a recipient of the Global Fund Financial Support has contributed a total of US$ 13.2 million for the Global Funds Seventh Replenishment covering 2023 – 2025 allocation period. This represents a 10 percent increase over its sixth replenishment pledge which is a demonstration of political will.
He explained that in the past three years, Global Fund has made tremendous donations of various diagnostic equipment distributed nationwide to effectively close the diagnostic gap in the management of TB and on the account of these investments, Nigeria diagnosed over 300,000 TB cases in 2023, marking the first time in its history that such a number of TB diagnosis is recorded. With this, Nigeria has now increased TB finding from 24 percent to 68 percent and also improve HIV treatment coverage in Nigeria between 2020 and 2023.
Conveying the appreciation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the Global Fund for the donation and support to the country’s response towards ending the epidermis of HIV, TB and Malaria by year 2030 and elimination of mother – child HIV transmission through the new thrust for Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) optimization and scale up, he commended the efforts of various partners for the excellent job of coordinating government’s response with support from the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) and Non Governmental Organisations who are principal recipients of the grant particularly FHI 360, Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria.
Speaking on behalf of the partners, Mark Edington, Head of Grant Management, Global Fund, said that “the goal here is to ensure that the state programme managers are equipped to coordinate the deployment of point of care diagnostic equipment for HIV and TB case findings to be agile to adjust to emerging local epidemiological trends to facilitate achievement of the pragmatic goals and to maximize Global Fund Investments in the states. Ihope that the investments will be effectively utilised to address challenges for the HIV and TB programmes”.
Appreciating the efforts of the Global Funds, Federal Government and partners for their unwavering commitment to the course of healthcare, Dr. Akinwumi Fajola, 2nd Vice Chair, CCM, the Global Fund Nigeria, stated that the partnership and integrated delivery is about working together in collaboration with all stakeholders and partners to deliver value to the people.
Deworitshe Patricia
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