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Manto wins the R600m AIDS fund battle
John Battersby. The Mercury, July 25 2002. Reprinted courtesy of Independent newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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President Thabo Mbeki has said that the confusion about a R600-million grant from the Global AIDS Fund to KwaZulu-Natal had been resolved after talks between the national and provincial government.
But Mbeki chided the fund for failing to observe the agreed procedures for the channelling of funds and supported, by implication, the controversial intervention of health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang who contested the channelling of funds through a province.
"I am not quite sure why the Global Health Fund acted outside its own terms of reference," Mbeki said.
"The rules for the functioning of the Global Health Fund are that the fund would refer to national reference points in each country and, therefore, that any disbursements from the fund would be the result of an agreement between a country and the fund."
Mbeki said that the problem had arisen because the fund had dealt with both the government and the province.
He said that he was not aware of the reasoning behind the fund's actions.
"It was necessary that we made sure we corrected that," he said.
He said earlier that the cabinet meeting had paid particular attention to health matters, including HIV/AIDS, and to the implementation of the April 17 cabinet decision on the treatment of HIV/AIDS in HIV-positive pregnant mothers and victims of sexual assault.
But Mbeki said he was still waiting for mortality statistics for the period 1997 to 2001 which he had requested from Statistics SA and several government departments. He expected to receive these statistics by the end of the year.
He said that the highest cause of death in the country was from TB.
"This requires a direct health response but it also means addressing the circumstances leading to TB, which is a socio-economic condition," he insisted.
Mbeki also emphasised that it was necessary to establish the rural and urban occurrence of this disease. |
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