Health, Finance agree on funds

Dec 18, 2003

HEALTH minister Brigadier Jim Muhwezi has said the Ministry of Finance is cooperating with his in receiving funds from donors to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in the country

By Alfred Wasike

HEALTH minister Brigadier Jim Muhwezi has said the Ministry of Finance is cooperating with his in receiving funds from donors to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in the country.

He said the recent disagreement between the two ministries on whether Uganda should accept additional donor funding against the diseases had ended and the Ministry of Finance was cooperative and positive.

Muhwezi’s announcements come after Sunday Vision quoted the Switzerland-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) complaining that some finance ministry officials were frustrating anti-AIDS cash from the organisation.

The GFATM executive director, Prof. Richard Feachem and his senior advisor Dr. Vinand Nantulya, raised the complaint at the end of the US Health Secretary, Tommi Thompson’s December 4-6 anti-AIDS mission to the country.

Feachem said, “We recently approved $136m to cover Uganda for two years. But in the summer of 2002, a public row broke out between the health and finance ministries on whether these monies could be absorbed. It is a real scandal. Can you imagine that only US$300,000 has been disbursed to Uganda?”

But Muhwezi said, “The matter was resolved when the Minister of Finance issued a clarification affirming Uganda’s commitment to accepting the funds as being additional to the Government resources.”

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