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Ethiopia and Global Fund Launch New Grants to Accelerate Progress Against HIV, TB and Malaria; Strengthen Health Systems
18 June 2024
ADDIS ABABA – Today the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) and the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia have launched the implementation of three new grants worth over US$441 million. The grants will sustain progress against HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria while strengthening health and community systems across the country over the 2024-2027 grant period.
“The past two decades have been tremendous; we have achieved a lot, but our country has also faced numerous challenges in the recent years, including COVID-19, conflict and climate change,” said Honorable Minister Mekdes Daba Feyssa, Minister of Health of Ethiopia. “This new grant cycle is a great opportunity to reaffirm that we are back, we want to do more and be closer to our community. We can reverse these challenges and use them as an opportunity to bounce back and strengthen not only our health infrastructure and digitalization, but also our health care capacity and health care force.”
“Ethiopia has been a key partner of the Global Fund over the years, achieving significant progress against HIV, TB and malaria while building resilient and sustainable systems for health,” said Mark Edington, Head of Grant Management at the Global Fund.
For HIV, the grant will support Ethiopia in its efforts to achieve and sustain epidemic control by 2027 by reducing new HIV infections and the AIDS mortality rate. The country’s national strategic plan aims to address important gaps, particularly in eliminating vertical transmission, enhancing HIV case finding and reaching key and priority populations – such as people who inject drugs, high risk adolescent girls and young women, and people in humanitarian settings.
The TB grant aims to accelerate the fight against the TB epidemic, which remains a major public health problem in the country. Ethiopia is among the 30 high TB, TB/HIV and drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) burden countries in the world. Finding and treating the missing people with TB/DR-TB is a priority for ending the TB epidemic in Ethiopia.
The malaria grant will sustain malaria control interventions and support Ethiopia in their transition to malaria elimination. Over the past decade, the country has achieved notable success in reducing malaria transmission intensity, leading to a decrease in malaria-related illness and deaths. Encouraged by these achievements, Ethiopia has initiated an elimination program to eradicate the disease by 2030. However, since 2020 the malaria burden has increased nationally, as new challenges such as conflict, drought, the appearance of a new malaria vector – Anopheles stephensi – and the COVID-19 pandemic concurrently emerged.
An additional grant aims to further strengthen Ethiopia’s capacity to provide an equitable, effective and efficient package of comprehensive and quality health services to its population. Approximately 20 years ago, the Ethiopian government launched a national community health workers program called the Health Extension Program (HEP) to alleviate the critical shortage of human resources for health and improve primary health care access for the rural population, so that nobody would have to walk more than 5 kilometers to reach a health post. As well as investing in the HEP, the grant aims to further strengthen laboratory systems; national supplies management systems and the last mile delivery of health commodities; health regulatory capacity; data systems; digitalization; and field epidemiology and laboratory training programs.
Since 2003, the Global Fund has invested US$3 billion in Ethiopia to support the country to continue the significant progress made in the fight against HIV, TB and malaria, build more resilient and sustainable systems for health, and protect existing gains in the face of conflict, mass displacement, food insecurity and severe drought.
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