Competing health needs of diverse populations and ever shrinking resources available to support these needs serves as the impetus for the initiation of advocacy efforts to improve community health believes NSA – Ghana. Hence our message to his excellency Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo, the President of the Republic of Ghana.
Ghana after 61 years of independence and a country rated to be lower middle income, should by now be able to take care of its affairs better and stop solely depending on external donors for areas such as HIV and TB.
Since 2002, Ghana has been receiving funding from the Global Fund to fight Malaria HIV and TB. This has been supported by many other donors such as USAID, various embassies and other entities. Unfortunately, these external support meant to complement that of the government of Ghana has in many cases been the sole source of funding for the fight against these 3 disease areas.
Ghana and Ghanaians will continue to say we pride ourselves in generally achieving low prevalence but we forget to ask ourselves how this has been possible. We also may want to think about the next question then, which is whether we will be able to sustain these gains if we do not put in much more effort than we are doing.
For some time now all we hear is the President of the Republic of Ghana having set up an HIV/AIDS Fund to address dwindling donor funding and so from all observations it seems that we as a country know the issue very well – Ghana cannot achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 if it does not strengthen its resource mobilization locally. The AIDS Fund therefore seemed a great initiative. Unfortunately, till this day it is unclear how and whether this fund is even functioning and the reliance on external funding continues.
One cannot help but wonder if HIV is indeed a priority to the government of Ghana. The National AIDS Spending Assessment (NASA) that critically examines the level and flow of resources to HIV, continues to show heavy contribution by external donors. How is Ghana ever going to sustain its gains?
President Akufo-Addo has in various speeches, many read on his behalf, continued to make reference to the national HIV/AIDS fund. As he puts it, the fund is meant to fill the financial gaps in the country’s HIV/AIDS response plan. The fund will not only ensure adequate domestic resources for the HIV and AIDS response, but will also front-load the resources needed to make the national response financially self-reliant on a sustainable basis as international donor funding dwindles his speeches have said over and over.
“My government has accepted the challenge and is working assiduously to operationalise the National HIV and AIDS Fund this year,” (this year being 2018) he said, again in a speech read on his behalf at yet another of the many HIV related functions he could not attend.
NSA – Ghana together with all PLHIV in Ghana and health workers dedicated to curbing the HIV epidemic are extremely worried at the current National figures in relation to the 90-90-90 global targets and realize that if HIV is not truly made a priority by the GoG, Ghana will never reach these targets.
Most of Ghana’s continued promises when it comes to HIV / AIDS hardly result in commitments and asuch the country continues to lag behind in its targets.
GoG, NSA-Ghana is reaching out to you with the following:
Take ownership of the country’s HIV control! Ensure the HIV/AIDS Fund is up and running! Pay all due counterpart funding and Mr. President, make HIV your priority and show up at HIV events to tell us your message yourself so we can hold you accountable.