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| India loses Rs 1,579 crore in funds for AIDS, TB, malaria |
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Technical glitches in filing funding proposals with the Global Fund is believed to have caused India to lose out on major funding for its AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria programmes |
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The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has refused India $331 million (Rs 1,579 crore) in funding that it asked for to combat the three diseases, reportedly because of technical problems with filing the funding proposals. Of this, around $103.5 million was meant for tuberculosis programmes, $97 million for HIV/AIDS, and $130 million for malaria. The Global Fund is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities to attract financing to fight tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria. The Fund held its annual meeting in New Delhi recently to approve $3.2 billion in grants to developing countries to prevent and treat these three diseases.  The funding was rejected for various reasons, from the costing of bed nets for the anti-malaria programme to issues with how the money would be translated on the ground in TB programmes and budgeting problems with the HIV programme.  India is home to 2.25 million tuberculosis patients undergoing treatment, 2.47 million suffering from HIV/AIDS, and 2 million from malaria. Proposals from countries are first screened for eligibility by the Global Fund’s secretariat and are then forwarded to a technical review panel that assesses proposals on technical merit and consistency according to proven best practices. The proposals are then approved for funding, approved after minor clarifications, deemed not appropriate for funding but can be revised and re-submitted, or are simply rejected. The Indian proposals in this eighth round of funding can be revised and re-submitted in the ninth round. The Global Fund has committed $492 million to India since 2005, making India Asia’s largest beneficiary of the Fund.  In February 2008, the World Bank announced that it had uncovered serious incidents of fraud and corruption in five bank-funded projects in India worth $570 million. The projects included those relating to HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. In the wake of that revelation, the Global Fund had said it did not have evidence of fraud occurring in any of its programmes in the country, but that it would certainly be reviewing them.  Source: http://www.livemint.com/2008/11/07003543/Casual-filing-costs-India-331.html, November 7, 2008 www.theglobalfund.org, November 7, 2008
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