The hard work started paying dividends, as Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSRC) has eventually succeeded in getting around $13.8 million funds from the Global Fund for its Malaria Control Programme in order to rid the county of the menace once and for all.
The ministry succeeded in getting the funds after series of meetings by programme’s National Manager Dr Baseer Achakzai with the Global Fund representatives on the instructions of Federal Minister Saira Afzal Tarar and Health Secretary Muhammad Ayub Sheikh.
The Global Fund will provide Pakistan the funds in three phases and the first installment would be received on January 2018. The Malaria programme would be funded through the Prioritize Above Allocation Request (PAAR), funds from the globe saving in a pool.
The funds would be utilised in the most malaria infected areas, which would be utilised by the federal government in close league with the provincial governments and no private agencies would be involved as it is an auditable amount.
During his exclusive talk with Pakistan Today, Dr Achakzai said that the global fund early refused to provide the funds but after strenuous efforts and repeated dialogue they were succeeded in convincing the GF to approve the fund which is a great achievement.
“Since our programme got a continuation phase and all areas which we want now to carry out through PAAR were included in our concept note and have been endorsed by Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in March,” he said.
“While this opportunity, we got approval by Global Fund after extensive discussions and rational and performance of our current rating which is A+. The GF gave us to go ahead for request endorsed by the CCM. So it is a good luck for us getting more funds,” he added.
Dr Achakzai said that the Directorate of Malaria Control has successfully submitted the programme continuation request after the endorsement of the CCM Pakistan, which was then approved by the Technical Review Panel (TRP) in March April 2017.
“The grant making has also been recently completed against the allocated funds of Rs 39.2 million. There were few activities which were part of the submitted programme continuation request, but due to the paucity of the funds, were dropped from allocation funds,” he added.
But he vowed that now there was an opportunity of these left over activities which were part of the submitted request and were endorsed by the CCM Pakistan to be funded through PAAR. The Global Fund indicated that these activities have to be endorsed by the CCM Pakistan before being funded through PAAR.
The CCM Pakistan (a forum of recommendation all requests comprises 26 members UN, CSOs, provinces, bilateral organisations, donors community i.e., ministries) has endorsed the request and GF will approve and release funds in January 18, he concluded.
