The UN Agency’s country director communicated their intentions last Friday June 25, 2021, during an audience granted her by the Economy Minister
The joint United Nations Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS has been on a fresh advocacy move, with anobjective to drive the government to invest more resources in the fight against the HIV/AIDS. The trail, on Friday June 25, 2021 took the UNAIDS Country Director for Cameroon, Savina Ammassari, to the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development. For a duration of about 70minutes, the Director and Minister Alamine Ousmane Mey talked on ways of boosting the fight with more finances.
“Today I came to thank the Minister for the collaboration we have had with him and with his team to realise the new policy for the elimination of HIV/AIDS user fees. In 2019, the Minister of Public Health adopted a directive eliminating all payments for HIV related services. And the UNAIDS helped to prepare that in partnership with the government. We had a very strong collaboration between the Ministries of Finance, Public Health and the Economy to make this new policy happen,” UNAIDS Country Director for Cameroon, SavinaAmmassari said shortly after the audience.
According to the policy, HIV related expenses, notably; testing, consultation, antiretroviral packages, treatment and the management of opportunistic infections are supposed to have gone free. “All of these have become free of charge but one of the challenges was to ensure that enough funds were earmarked, (we are speaking about domestic funds) in the national budget. The UNAIDS helped to do an estimate on how much was required. We worked to make sure that this was included in the national budget. We also worked closely with the Ministry of Finance to ensure that this money will actually be disbursed and that it will reach the health care facilities on time, to replace the payments done by patients,” she added.
Patients Bearing The Brunt
Worthy of note is the fact that despite numerous HIV/AIDS programmes here and there, a whopping 70 per cent of the financial resources used in the fight against the virus in Cameroon, unfortunately still come from the patients themselves. The UNAIDS official said this is a real problem because a majority of the people can’t afford it. “Someone gets sick, needs care and can’t afford it. Ends up losing the job, and consequently earns even less money and gets indebted and maybe has to take the kids out of school because they have to prioritise their health. It’s a virtuous cycle we need to break,” SavinaAmmassari insisted.
The two officials also discussed on the need to invest more money not only in curbing the virus, but in educating young girls, as a long term objective. Statistics garnered by UNAIDS reveal that girls who study beyond secondary education have higher chances of not contracting the virus. This has been the motivation of the recently launched initiative, “Education Plus.” In addition to this new initiative and the elimination HIV related expenses, UNAIDS has secured some FCFA 165 billion from the Global Funds, to be invested in combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Cameroon between 2021 and 2023.
Comments