The Global fund announced on Tuesday that they are providing $867million new funding to forty countries to fund activities relating to the COVID-19 response.
According to a statement, a total of $547million has already been dispersed and the process to award another $320 million has been initiated.
The grants which are coming when infection transmission in many countries has gone lowest have been tied to funding investments relating to disease surveillance, laboratory networks, community health worker networks and community-based organizations, medical oxygen and respiratory care systems, as well as the rollout of novel therapeutics to scale up test-and-treat programs in case of future COVID-19 surges.
“These investments reflect the deliberate re-balancing of C19RM from the immediate COVID-19 response towards strengthening key components of health systems to counter potential future variants and reinforce pandemic preparedness,” said part of the statement.
Uganda is among the forty countries that will benefit from this funding and according to Health Minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, the country has been benefiting from such funding targeted towards the COVID-19 response since 2020.
She says the money has been used to address gaps in disease surveillance and strengthen national laboratory systems to reinforce their capacity to detect COVID-19 and other pathogens.
“Most recently in 2022, our strong surveillance systems enabled Uganda to detect the Ebola outbreak in a timely manner, respond and eventually control the outbreak in a record time of 69 days,” said Dr. Aceng.
However, with the new funding, the global donor body is now asking countries to express an interest in having their funding requests considered for inclusion in a potential Global Fund proposal to the Pandemic Fund, which has recently announced a call for proposals for US$300 million in funding.
The total amount awarded by the fund towards the COVID-19 response since 2020 now amounts to almost US$5 billion, according to the statement.
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