BURKINA FASO – The Government of Burkina Faso, the Global Fund and health partners strengthened their partnership by launching four new grants to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics and strengthen health systems.
The new grants, worth a total of EUR 205.1 million (US$243.4m), represent a 60% increase from the previous three-year allocation cycle and will cover the 2021-2023 implementation period.
To date, the Global Fund has invested EUR 768 million (US$911.4m) in Burkina Faso to support the country’s efforts to fight the three diseases and strengthen systems for health.
The new grants will be managed by le Programme d’Appui au Développement Sanitaire, le Comité National de Lutte contre le Sida and l’Initiative Privée pour la lutte contre le SIDA/IPC.
The new investments will support efforts to scale up HIV programs to achieve the 95-95-95 targets by enrolling more than 84,500 people on antiretroviral therapy by 2023, strengthening differentiated HIV services, including index testing and expanding access to prevention and treatment for key populations.
The new grants also aim to strengthen the country’s supply chain management, improve TB case detection and procure 16 million mosquito nets for the 2022 mass distribution campaign to protect families against malaria. An important investment is given to strengthen community health systems and data quality.
Burkina Faso’s partnership with the Global Fund has already achieved significant impact. Sixty-nine percent of people living with HIV in the country are on antiretroviral therapy and 95 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women received treatment to prevent transmission of the virus to their unborn children.
The partnership has also distributed 12 million mosquito nets in the last allocation cycle and successfully treated 1,943 people with TB between January and June 2020 alone.
“All the credit goes to the Government of Burkina Faso, the Country Coordinating Mechanism, the Principal Recipients, the civil society and all our partners who have worked relentlessly in difficult conditions to achieve these remarkable results,” said Mark Edington, Head of Grant Management at the Global Fund.
Meanwhile, the government of Burkina Faso plans to mobilize EUR 79 million (US$93.75m) to finance the second phase of the Greater Ouaga Urban Mobility Project (PMUGO).
This second phase “is intended for the development of road infrastructure (roads and intersections) and street furniture (bus stops) and the construction of a multimodal exchange station at Naaba Koom Square,” explains the government.
According to the Minister of Transport, a total of 330 buses will be deployed to facilitate urban mobility, including 230 for the Greater Ouaga project, and 100 buses for rental in the fleet of the transport company SOTRACO.
Greater Ouaga is a geographical area of about 3,304 km2, including the commune of Ouagadougou and seven outlying rural communes (Komki-Ipala, Komsilga, Koubri, Loumbila, Pabré, Saaba, and Tanghin-Dassouri).
