Uganda is among 40 countries that is benefiting from US$ 867Million funding from the Global Fund to fund activities related to Covid 19 response.
According to a statement released by Global Fund on February 14th, since December 2022, the Global Fund has awarded US$547 million in additional funding to 40 countries through its Covid 19 response mechanism (C19RM) and has now initiated the process to award a further US$320 million, making a total of approximately US$867 million.
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.
According to the Health minister Jane Ruth Aceng, the money has been used to address gaps in disease surveillance and strengthennational laboratory systems to reinforce their capacities to detect Covid19 and other pathogens.
“From the start of the pandemic, the Global Fund took a leading role in supporting low- and middle-income countries like Uganda to scale up testing for the new virus, leveraging 20 years of experience in procuring diagnostics and investing in laboratory capacities and disease surveillance. 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,” Aceng said.
Global Fund has invited countries to express an interest in having their funding requests considered for inclusion in a potential Global Fund proposal to the Pandemic Fund.