JOHANNESBURG, 14 March 2011 (PlusNews): When the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended funding to Zambia in late 2010 it made international headlines and rocked (rystede) donor confidence, but the stock-outs (tomme lagre) and drug rationing in the wake of the scandal have received little attention.
In March 2009 a whistle blower’s allegations of corruption in the Zambian Ministry of Health (MoH) triggered an investigation by the auditor general (svarer nogenlunde til rigsrevisionen), and a web of corruption in the health sector began to unravel.
The audit found that the largely donor-funded ministry could not account for more than 7,2 million US dollar (ca. 38 mio. DKR – et enormt beløb i et u-land), about five percent of which was estimated to have come from Global Fund coffers.
It was just the tip of the iceberg.
A separate Global Fund audit painted a disturbing picture of poor financial management across the four principal recipient organizations: the ministries of health and finance, the Christian Health Association of Zambia (CHAZ) and the Zambian National AIDS Network.
Principal recipients receive Global Fund financing directly for programme implementation or to pass on to other organizations called sub-recipients.
The Global Fund subsequently suspended grants to all these organizations except CHAZ, and stripped the MoH of its principal recipient status, giving this responsibility to the Zambia country office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Resolving the problem brought delays in funding distributions and stock-outs of antiretroviral (ARV) and tuberculosis (TB) drugs for treating this common co-infection. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and internationally funded initiatives like the USAID DELIVER PROJECT scrambled to bring in emergency supplies.
Missing money, missing drugs
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