Shift in donor priorities to hit war on diseases

Dar es Salaam. The war against HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis in Tanzania may be seriously affected in the next three years due to dwindling resources, a new UNAIDS report has revealed.

The UN report attributes declining resources to donors’ shift of interests from the fight against HIV/Aids to epidemics like Covid-19 and monkeypox and the war in Ukraine.

Dubbed In Danger, the UN report was launched on the eve of the 24th International Aids Conference (IAC) taking place in Montreal, Canada from July 29 to August 2, 2022.

In 2019,Tanzania received $587.3 million (Sh1.33 trillion) from the Global Fund to help the country to intensify its war against the three killer diseases in a period of 2020-2022.

According to the Global Fund, $364.84 million (Sh828.19 billion) was allocated for HIV/Aids, $179.4 million (Sh407.15 billion) for malaria and the remaining $43.1 million (Sh97.67 billion) for tuberculosis.

The fund’s expenditures reach an end in December 2022, something that will pile pressure on the government’s budget execution if the amount dished from the fund will adversely decline.

Tabling the 2022/23 Fiscal Year budget in Dodoma, Health minister Ummy Mwalimu said as of December 2021, Tanzania had 1.8 million people living with HIV/Aids.

“About 1.5 million of the total number of people living with the disease has been put under the antiretroviral drugs and that Sh26.608 billion has been allocated for implementation of the National Aids Control Programmes,” she told the Budget House.

But, during the report launch, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima said response to the Aids pandemic has been derailed by global crises from the colliding pandemics of HIV and Covid, to the war in Ukraine and the resulting global economic crisis.

“Despite the fall in investment, the report shows there was a slight reduction in the new HIV infections globally between 2020 and 2021 which is 3.6 percent,” she said.

But, the UN report says that was the smallest annual drop since 2016 after recording 1.5 million new infections which is more than a million above the global target in the anti-Aids war.

The global target under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) forecasts to end the disease by 2030.

But the regions of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America, witnessed a rise in new infections, says the report.

Nonetheless, Sub-Saharan Africa still remains a major concern, accounting for the majority of new infections of about 59 percent recorded in 2021.

Globally, there were 38.4 million people living with HIV in 2021 and 650,000 deaths from Aids-related illnesses.

Furthermore, the report suggests that Covid-19 and other instabilities have disrupted health services in many places of the world, sending millions of students out of school, hence increasing their HIV vulnerability.

The UN says in the report, the HIV response in low- and middle-income countries is $8 billion short of the amount needed by 2025.

While the UN report also calls for attention to racial inequalities as HIV transmission contributing factor, officials say access to life-saving treatments is faltering, growing by its slowest rate in over a decade.

“Three-quarters of all people living with HIV had access to antiretroviral treatment within the period under review, but 10 million people didn’t,” the report reads.

But, UNAIDS regional director for Western and Central Africa, Ms Berthilde Gahongayire said two years has been spent talking about Covid-19 and forgetting about HIV/Aids.

“Some people may think that it has ended, while it hasn’t. We are talking about the financing gap. If the international community gets together, if domestic resources are mobilized, if we are all together… it is possible to end Aids by 2030,” she said during her virtual press briefing.

Global Fund executive director Peter Sands said investment will be made to support innovations that will allow the fund to restart and accelerate progress towards ending the disease by 2030.

“In our battle against HIV, we cannot let 20 years of progress be erased. We need a sustained movement of global solidarity and leadership to halt and reverse this trend of flat-lined progress in reducing new infections and deaths from this disease every year,” he said.

“That means investing vigorously in fighting the disease across the world, reaching all people, whoever they are and wherever they live. To end HIV and other infectious diseases, we must invest strongly now, or we will pay forever,” he added.

Following the ongoing situation, US President Joe Biden will host the Global Fund’s seventh replenishment this September aimed at raising $18 billion for the next three years of the Global Fund partnership’s activities.

“Success in raising those funds is a matter of life and death. With $18 billion we could save at least 20 million lives over just three years and cut the annual death toll from HIV, TB and malaria by almost two-thirds,” said Mr Sands.

“We would also make everyone in the world safer from future infectious disease threats, by strengthening health and community systems and making them more inclusive and resilient,” he added.

In 2019, the Global Fund allocated $12.71 billion for country allocations and $890 million for catalytic investments for the period starting January 1, 2020 to December 2022.

The amount was 23 percent more than allocations made in the previous three-year, anticipating to save 16 million lives, cut the mortality rate for the three diseases by half and get the world back on track to end the epidemics of Aids, tuberculosis and malaria by 2030.

It is from this amount that Tanzania received Sh1.33 trillion whose expenditure ends in December this year.