4 July 2006
The Partnership Forum is an important structure in the architecture of the
Global Fund and has significant implications for the replenishment process. It
is within this context that I wish to make a comment or two on the Partnership
Forum.
I wish to acknowledge that the Partnership Forum was approached with a sense
of seriousness it deserves and the structure of the meeting allowed for a
meaningful participation by all. It was indeed a success.
South Africa would like to see the strengthening of this important process,
firstly by replicating it in-country through national partnership fora, which
would extend participation. We can also strengthen this process by giving due
recognition to the role of government in the process. Sadly, the evaluation of
the Partnership Forum was silent with respect to recognising the role of
government.
I have referred to our National Health Act that provides for the
establishment of a Consultative Health Forum, a legislative framework that
accords all stakeholders a platform to express themselves with regard to all
health issues including HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. It is within
this legislative framework that we will establish a national partnership forum
and also reconsider our country coordinating mechanism model.
As South Africans we are indeed honoured to have hosted the mid-term review
of the Global Fund Replenishment. This is particularly important since we are
part of a region that is highly affected by Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV and
AIDS and a significant number of countries in our region are beneficiaries of
the Global Fund.
Financial resources from the Global Fund have become an important and
necessary part of health spending in many countries in the African region and
other countries of the south, in particular the poorest countries. Predictable
and sustainable financing is one of the major determinants of success in
scaling up of interventions for Malaria, Tuberculosis, HIV and AIDS prevention,
treatment, care and support.
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that between
20 and 23 billion US dollars is needed annually to support scaling up of HIV
and AIDS responses in low and middle-income countries by 2010. This figure is
certainly significantly higher when estimates for Tuberculosis and Malaria over
the same period are factored in.
The Global Fund estimates the funding gap to be 800 million US dollars for
Round 6 and 2.1 billion US dollars for 2006/07.
We acknowledge that donors have a number of competing priorities for limited
funds and that they also have a variety of channels to get their funding to the
end recipients, including through bilateral funding arrangements. However, we
believe it is imperative that the Global Fund is fully funded in order to fully
fund Round 6 and frequent rounds in subsequent years.
At the replenishment conference in London, we emphasised the need for
countries with a potential to contribute significantly to do so and in this
regard the Global Fund was tasked to mobilise additional contributions and to
report on progress at this mid-term review.
I therefore encourage our development partners to be generous today and
tomorrow as well as in the future, open your hearts and wallets and fund this
gap. Failure to do so will have very grave consequences for the future of
humanity.
It is important for the Global Fund to demonstrate its added value. It has
to continuously prove that it is an effective and premium mechanism to channel
donor resources in order to encourage donors to see it as a funding channel of
choice in response to the three diseases.
Donors and recipients have a joint responsibility for ensuring that the
Global Fund has sufficient resources. We must hold true to our commitment to
ensure that no fully-costed national plan is left unfunded.
I have repeatedly said that as recipient countries we must bear part of the
responsibility to close this funding gap by allocating in an incremental
manner, domestic funds in our own budgets, for a sustainable comprehensive
response.
South Africa remains committed to increasing investment of domestic
resources. An example is that our Comprehensive HIV and AIDS plan is 90%
financed through domestic funding. Budget allocation has tripled over the last
four years from just over 1 billion rand in 2002 to 1.9 billion rand in 2003
and to 2.9 billion rand in 2004 and 3.5 billion rand in 2005.
We further remain committed to supporting the Global Fund consistent with
our potential and ability to do so. We have so far pledged 10 million US
dollars over a period of five years from 2003 to 2007. As a gesture of this
commitment, I wish to announce that the South African Government will pledge an
additional one million South African rand, in this current financial year.
As we deliberate today and tomorrow about replenishment for 2008 and beyond,
we challenge all partners to ensure maximum predictability and sustainability
of financing national plans in response to the three diseases.
Thank you very much for your time.
Enquiries:
Sibani Mngadi
Cell: 082 772 0161
Charity Bhengu
Cell: 084 521 2035
Issued by: Ministry of Health
4 July 2006
