SPEECH BY HONOURABLE SYLVIA T. MASEBO, MP MINISTER OF HEALTH DURING THE GLOBAL FUND GRANT CYCLE 7 (GC7) SIGNING CEREMONY.
22nd MARCH, 2024
It is with great pleasure and profound gratitude that I address you today, on the occasion of signing the Global Fund Grant Cycle Seven (GC7). I am aware that our shared goals of achieving HIV epidemic control by 2030 and that of reducing the incidence of malaria, receive a lot of financial and technical support from the Global Fund. Excellencies, allow me also to mention that the Global Fund is the second biggest external funding entity to Zambia for the fight against HIV, TB, and Malaria.
As the Minister of Health, I am excited that the Grant Cycle Seven is being approved today. With this approval, Zambia will receive 349 million USD for control of Malaria, TB, and HIV in 2024 to 2026. This translates into 116 million USD per year over the next three years. This Grant Cycle Seven brings the total value of the grants received from the Global Fund since its inception in 2003, to 1.8 billion USD.
Zambia values and appreciates the Global Fund’s financial and technical assistance. This assistance has allowed the country to mount robust responses to fight HIV, TB, and Malaria, resulting in landmark achievements: Notable achievements include the following:
- Zambia has surpassed her 2020 UNAIDS targets on 90-90-90;
- Zambia is also within reach of the numerical goals of 95-95-95 targets by 2025. Currently
- 89% of our people living with HIV know their HIV status;
- 98% of them have been initiated on life-saving HIV treatments; and
- 96% have achieved viral load suppression.
- In TB control, Zambia has posted the following achievements:
- Increased the annual case detection from around 40,000 a few years ago to over 50,000 in 2023;
- Increased the number of people accessing TB preventive therapy; and
- Increased TB treatment success rate to over 85%.
In Malaria control, Zambia has reduced deaths due to malaria from 15 deaths per population of 100,000 people in 2015 to 7 deaths per population of 100,000 people in 2023.
Despite these successes, malaria, TB, and HIV still remain diseases of huge public health concern:
a)Zambia is still overwhelmed by HIV, with over 28,000 new HIV infections being recorded in 2021, according to the most recent ZAMPHIA survey. Sadly, a large proportion of these new infections are among young people. We need to reduce new infections by investing in evidence-based prevention interventions such as voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), prevention of
mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), and PrEP.
b)In TB, we need to enhance our activities to improve on case identification, including multi-drug resistant TB;
c)In Malaria, we need to aim at:
- Increasing the coverage of insecticide treated bed nets;
- Continuing to implement in-door residual spraying, and
- Reducing deaths due to malaria to less than five deaths per population of 100,000 people by 2030.
The Grant cycle seven being signed today will greatly support these efforts. I therefore wish to express my sincere gratitude to all donors to the Global Fund. I also wish to thank the portfolio management team in Geneva, for their continued support. We look forward to your continued support as we strive to achieve control of TB, Malaria, and HIV in order to improve the health and well-being of our people.
I also thank my colleagues and representa
tives of other line ministries who are here to make sure that, together, we can improve the health status of our people. This is and has always been the aspiration of our leader, his Excellency the President of the Republic of Zambia, Mr Hakainde Hichilema.
Before I conclude, let me mention that our Government wishes the Global Fund well in it’s current effort to replenish the Global Fund resources through the upcoming ninth replenishment exercise. This is an important exercise that will ensure that the Global Fund continues to support countries like Zambia, which have high burdens of HIV, TB and Malaria. I wish to encourage the donor community to rise to the occasion to support the replenishment of the global fund for the next funding cycle. If you need any support from us during this process, we will be more than willing to do everything within our manageable interest to support this effort.
Once again, I want to express our sincere appreciation to the Global Fund for its unwavering support and partnership. Together, we will continue to work tirelessly to improve the health and well-being of all Zambians to achieve our shared goal of ending HIV, TB, and Malaria.
Thank you.