COTE D'IVOIRE: Wrangle delays $91m aid package to fight AIDS

ABIDJAN, 25 June 2003 (PlusNews) - The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has delayed the disbursement of a US $91 million grant to Cote d'Ivoire because of a dispute between government departments in Abidjan over who gets to spend the money, official sources said.

The Geneva-based fund has also failed to reach agreement with the Ivorian government over who should control disbursement of the funds and monitor their spending, they added.

Mabingue Ngon, the representative of the Swiss-based Fund for Francophone and Lusophone Africa, was due to have signed the aid agreement in Abidjan on Monday, the sources said.

However, he flew back to Geneva with the unsigned document because of a dispute between the Ministry of Health, the Ministry for Combating HIV/AIDS and the Ministry of Social Welfare over how the money would be divided up between them, they added.

Mamadou Diallo, the representative in Cote d'Ivoire of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said he hoped all issues holding up the signing of the aid agreement could be resolved by the end of July

The Global Fund was set up two years ago with the backing of the United Nations, Western governments, relief agencies and several wealthy businessmen, including Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, to raise funds for tackling three of the world's top killer diseases

Diallo, said most of the grant would be used to train health workers in Cote d'Ivoire, provide information to carriers of the HIV virus about how to prevent the spread of the infection and purchase specialist drugs to treat people who had developed AIDS. Some of the money would also be used to fight tuberculosis and malaria, he added.

According to the Ministry for Combating HIV/AIDS, 12 percent of Cote d'Ivoire's 16 million population already carries the HIV virus. The HIV infection rate varies from a low of 8.2% in the heavily forested southeast of the country to a high of 14.6 percent in the east near the border with Ghana.

According to the Collective of Non-Governmental Organisations fighting AIDS in Cote d'Ivoire (COOCI), there are about 75,000 AIDS sufferers in the country. There are also 5,000 orphans of parents who died from the disease, for which there is no known cure.

COOCI estimates there are about 10,000 AIDS sufferers in Cote d'Ivoire who would benefit from anti-retroviral drugs that help to slow the progression of the disease. However only 2,500 are receiving treatment at present.

Anti-retroviral drugs are only available from specially authorised hospital pharmacies and are not subsidised by the government. Treatment costs between US $60 and US $180 a month, according to the prescribed level of dosage. That compares to Cote d'Ivoire's minimum wage of US $80 a month, putting the cost of treatment well beyond the means of most people.

Ako Cyriaqe Yapo, president of the "Club of Friends," a voluntary organisation set up to help AIDS sufferers in Cote d'Ivoire, said he feared that much of the money promised by the Global Fund would simply end up in private pockets. "We fear that this financial package will be applied to ends other than the benefit of sufferers of HIV/AIDS," he told IRIN.

Yapo also highlighted a shortage of anti-retroviral drugs in Cote d'Ivoire because some overseas suppliers were refusing to dispatch fresh stocks until they received payment for consignments already delivered. He noted that all three hospitals in Abidjan which are authorised to supply these medicines ran out of two key products, Stocrin and 3TC, in mid-May because of this problem.

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[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]