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Mozambique

US$374 million for fight against AIDS, TB and malaria

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on 17 June announced that US$374 million will be disbursed to fight these diseases in Mozambique. The Global Fund, the Ministry of Health, the US-based charity World Vision, and one of Mozambique’s main NGOs, the Community Development Foundation (FDC) all signed a memorandum of understanding on the use of this grant.

The money for the AIDS programme is intended to increase the availability of life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs. Currently an estimated 40 per cent of people with the HIV virus which causes AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral treatment. The target is to raise this to 60 per cent by 2016.

Other targets include extending HIV prevention services to cover 60 per cent of prostitutes, 60 per cent of adolescents, 39 per cent of Mozambican migrants working on the South African mines and 30 per cent of gay men.

For tuberculosis the target is to raise notification rates from 233 per 100,000 inhabitants to 320 by 2017

The subvention for malaria seeks to increase the domestic use of mosquito nets from 53 per cent in 2011 to 70 per cent by 2017. It is also hoped to reduce the rate of hospital deaths from malaria from 13 to eight per 100,000 patients between 2014 and 2016.

Health Minister Nazira Abdula told the signing ceremony that the government is mobilising resources for a qualitative improvement in the health services, recognising that people will only be able to participate in development if they are in good health.

“2014 was characterised by successes achieved in reducing the risk of the transmission of HIV from mother to child, and this fact encourages to work still harder to accumulate more gains”, she said.

The agreement, Abdula added, “cannot just be a signing between the parties, but should be a turning point in our mechanisms of formal and informal relationships, with the target of reducing the weight of the great endemic diseases in our country”.

The head of grant management of the Global Fund, Mark Edington, said effective implementation of the programmes supported by the grant will be fundamental to reduce the number of victims of the three diseases.

This grant comes from a large number of donors to the Global Fund, including the United States, Ireland, France, the Methodist Church, and companies such as BHP-Billiton and the Brazilian mining giant Vale.

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