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The donors are planning to stop their funding for HIV treatment in Congo.
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Photo by: M. Sayagues/PlusNews
The lives of thousands of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at risk as the country faces declining donor funding and a severe shortage of HIV treatment, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (
MSF).
MSF recently launched a year-long advocacy campaign to raise awareness of the DRC’s HIV crisis.
“The problem is quite old in the DRC; the country has always been minimized by donors who have not seen it as a priority, mainly because HIV prevalence is relatively low at between 3 and 4 percent,” Thierry Dethier,
advocacy manager for MSF Belgium in the DRC, told IRIN/PlusNews. “But look at the indicators:
more than one million people are living with HIV, 350,000 of whom qualify for ARVs [antiretrovirals] but only 44,000 – or 15 percent – are on ARVs.”
Dwindling funds
Dethier said the main reason for the ARV crisis was the end of six years of World Bank funding in 2011. International health financing mechanism UNITAID, which provides funding for paediatric and second-line ARVs,
is also ending its funding to the DRC in December 2012; the cancellation of Round 11 funding by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is only likely to worsen the situation.
“The country is currently using funds from round seven and eight of the Global Fund; these funds are due to be consolidated but have also been cut – round seven by 30 percent… round eight may also be cut,” Dethier said. “We expect that the consolidated funds will last through 2014, after which there is no funding for DRC.”
This article was taken from plusnews-http://www.plusnews.org/
The lives of thousands of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at risk as the country faces declining donor funding and a severe shortage of HIV treatment, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (
MSF). MSF recently launched a year-long advocacy campaign to raise awareness of the DRC’s HIV crisis.
“The problem is quite old in the DRC; the country has always been minimized by donors who have not seen it as a priority, mainly because HIV prevalence is relatively low at between 3 and 4 percent,” Thierry Dethier,
advocacy manager for MSF Belgium in the DRC, told IRIN/PlusNews. “But look at the indicators:
more than one million people are living with HIV, 350,000 of whom qualify for ARVs [antiretrovirals] but only 44,000 – or 15 percent – are on ARVs.”
Dwindling funds
Dethier said the main reason for the ARV crisis was the end of six years of World Bank funding in 2011. International health financing mechanism UNITAID, which provides funding for paediatric and second-line ARVs,
is also ending its funding to the DRC in December 2012; the cancellation of Round 11 funding by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is only likely to worsen the situation.
“The country is currently using funds from round seven and eight of the Global Fund; these funds are due to be consolidated but have also been cut – round seven by 30 percent… round eight may also be cut,” Dethier said. “We expect that the consolidated funds will last through 2014, after which there is no funding for DRC.”
This article was taken from plusnews-http://www.plusnews.org/
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