Uganda, a country regarded as a pioneer in the fight against HIV/Aids, was on Wednesday accused of ”serious mismanagement” of funds intended for the campaign.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended grants to the country worth hundreds of millions of dollars after an investigation found flaws in a government agency’s accounts.
The investigation by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that some expenses were ”inappropriate, unexplained or improperly documented”. It also found funds awarded to organisations that had failed to prove their legal status.
The Global Fund said it had not begun a full-scale investigation, which would require the disclosure of bank records and other personal information, so there was ”no concrete evidence” of corruption.
But the Geneva-based agency said there was sufficient evidence of ”inappropriate expenditure and improper accounting” in the project management unit, a Ugandan health ministry division in charge of handling the funds.
The Global Fund has suspended five grants worth more than $201-million, of which more than $45-million has already been handed out.
The concerns are over a grant intended to finance better sex education, testing and counselling services for HIV/Aids and provide drugs and medical supplies. The Global Fund said it had suspended four other grants, one aimed at funding antiretroviral therapy for HIV/Aids, and others tackling tuberculosis and malaria, because the same government agency was involved in handling all of them.
In a statement, the Global Fund said it had asked the Ugandan finance ministry to come up with a revised strategy for spending the grant money by the end of October. It insisted that Uganda disband the project management unit. Patients getting anti-retroviral drugs would continue to receive their medicines, and condom distribution would continue.
The statement said: ”All necessary measures will be taken to ensure that life-saving treatment as well as prevention activities such as condom procurement and distribution … will not be disrupted during this period.”
No one from the Ugandan finance ministry was available to comment on the allegations to The Guardian.
The Global Fund, a partnership between governments, the private sector and charities, was set up after the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa to channel financing for HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. About 60% of its funding is spent in sub-Saharan Africa.
Uganda has made the fight against HIV/Aids a policy priority and has been praised for its efforts and held up as an example to other African states. The country has had success in reducing adult infection rates from 30% in the early 1990s to below 6% last year.
However, Uganda’s social fabric has been badly damaged by the epidemic. There are rising numbers of people requiring care as those infected some years back develop symptoms, and there are also rising numbers of orphans from infected families.
Most Ugandans attribute the reduction in infection rates to President Yoweri Museveni’s frankness about how condoms can help tackle the spread of the virus. But the government has recently been criticised for appearing to emphasise abstinence over condom use.
About 1,2-million Ugandans are infected with HIV, according to official figures, and doctors say about 100 000 have got HIV/Aids. – Guardian Unlimited Â