The Global Fund and health partners in Kenya have agreed to finance six grants to strengthen the response to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) and enable 1.3 million people to get access to antiretroviral therapy by 2021, as well as increasing efforts to find more missing cases of TB
The Global Fund and health partners in Kenya have agreed to finance six grants to strengthen the response to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) and enable 1.3 million people to get access to antiretroviral therapy by 2021, as well as increasing efforts to find more missing cases of TB.
The National Treasury of Kenya, Kenya Red Cross Society and AMREF Health Africa will manage the grants, worth US$380 million, whilst the Ministry of Health will support county governments in managing their implementation.
The grants will go towards investment in activities and programmes that impact specific areas in the tackling of the three diseases, such as human rights and those most affected by HIV and TB, such as adolescent girls and young women.
In Kenya, the Ministry of Health is working with development partners, civil society and those affected by the diseases to ensure investments are reaching the right programmes and having the greatest impact.
The government has also committed to an additional $130 million of investment in line with Global Fund’s Sustainability, Transition and Co-Financing Policy, which supports countries moving towards wholly domestically-funded health systems responding to HIV, malaria and TB.
The fight against HIV, TB and malaria has a combined cost of US$24.8 million worldwide.
Kenya has seen progress made against HIV and malaria recently. Between 1996 and 2016, HIV prevalence decreased from 10.5% to 5.4%, and since 2009, the country has reduced new infections among children by 44%.
Malaria has also been reduced from 11% prevalence in 2010 to 8% in 2015.
The Cabinet Secretary of the National Treasury, Henry Rotich, signed the agreements and said: “We are pleased that we can all work together in the fight against diseases.
“Through this investment, we will accelerate our efforts to respond to HIV, TB and malaria with the aim of ending the devastating effects of these diseases in our country.”
Linden Morrison, Head of the Global Fund’s High Impact Africa II Department, said: “Kenya is an excellent example of partnership at work.
“It was inspiring to see how the country designed the grants by conducting a successful country dialogue, ensuring that key partners were engaged and that people most affected by the diseases were put front and centre of the investments.”
“We have a historic opportunity to end the three diseases as public health threats.
“By working together, this partnership can achieve more impact in changing the lives of Kenyans, by contributing to their health and therefore to economic development.”
