THE Federal Government of Nigeria says the country has accessed US$2,436,371,946 of the Global Fund towards fighting Malaria, Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and for Resilient Systems Strengthening for Health since 2002. And nearly $1.2 billion of this fund has been spent to end malaria.
Despite spending about half of the fund to fight the disease, Nigeria has been the epicentre of Malaria in the world according to a 2018 study by the World Health Organisation (WHO), The ICIR had reported.
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire said this while addressing journalists on Tuesday in Abuja on the receipt of a fresh $895 million by the Global Fund for the purpose.
Ehanire said the Nigerian Government has so far taken possession of US$2,436,371,946 out of the $2,585,537,824 dedicated by the Global Fund to operations in Nigeria.
According to him, this represents 94 per cent of the funds as dedicated by the Global Fund since its inception.
He noted that the funds were split into four programs including Malaria, Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and Resilient Systems Strengthening for Health.
“A breakdown of the funds disbursed to Nigeria so far is as follows: HIV/AIDS: $874,801,962; Tuberculosis: $338,655,681; Malaria: $1,168,613,356; RSSH: $44,178,974; TB/HIV: $10,421,972, Ehanire said.
The minister further noted that the Global Fund has approved a fresh $21.9 million dollars to Nigeria as a grant to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Global Fund also approved a grant of US$21.9 million to support Nigeria’s COVID-19 response, the new grant being the result of a proposal Nigeria CCM submitted to The Global Fund a few weeks ago,” He noted.
According to him, the approved grant would assist the country test about 1 million Nigerians in 12 months.
“The new grant will be specifically used to procure test kits to support COVID-19 testing with the GeneXpert machine and other molecular laboratory equipment. Overall, The Global Fund grants for COVID-19 will support testing for about 1 million Nigerians over the next 12 months,” the minister said.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94