Global Fund accepts withdrawal of Health dept

National, Normal
Source:

The National, Friday, June 3rd 2011

By ALISON ANIS
THE Global Fund office in Geneva has accepted the resignation of the Health Department as the principal recipient of the Global Fund grants to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria.
Responding to the resignation letter on April 15 by Health secretary Dr Clement Malau, Global Fund acting director for country programmes Jonathan Brown said: “Given the contextual factors of grant implementation and the recent audit findings of our office of the inspector general, the Global Fund accepts your resignation as principal recipient for the three programmes.”
The fund then requested CCM to nominate an institution in the country to be the principal recipient for funds.
Nominations for that will begin today, a CCM spokesperson said yesterday.
“CCM will meet today to facilitate the transfer of principal recipient responsibilities. We have received applications from various organisations after running an adverto­rial in the papers,” he said.
Malau wrote regarding the Health department’s role as principal recipient for two current GFTM grants and the anticipated phase two renewal for soon-to-be negotiated Round 8 and 10 grants.
He cited that it was a challenging year ahead with the restructure of department, that health and financial systems were fragile and needed continued support.
He said the weakness in the system was causing a burden not only to the implementation and administration of Global Fund through but to programme managers and officers who spent a lot of time on GF grants.