By IPS Correspondents
ABIDJAN, Apr 9 2003 (IPS)

The Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS has just granted 92 million U.S. Dollars to Cote D’Ivoire to fight AIDS in the strife-torn West African country.

Cote d’Ivoire, with a population of 16 million, is the most affected by HIV/AIDS in West Africa.

Unfortunately, the country has been split into two by a six-month civil war, making it virtually impossible for anti-AIDS campaigners to operate freely across the country.

”Cote d’Ivoire’s monitoring system is in disarray in more than half the country. How will those living with HIV/AIDS in conflict zones take advantage of this grant? It will be hard to locate all those still alive, given the prevailing security situation in war zones,” says Urban Tiecoura of Luniere Action, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), working with people living with HIV/AIDS in Cote d’Ivoire.

Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sep 2002, anti-AIDS groups have found it hard to keep track of people living with HIV/AIDS, most of who have fled for their lives. Since there is no possibility to reach them in the bush, those living with HIV/AIDS will have to cope on their own.

More than1.5 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in Cote D’Ivoire, where 600,000 AIDS orphans have been produced, according to a 1998-1999 official statistics.

Clotilde Ohouochi, the minister of social affairs, has urged anti-AIDS campaigners to reduce the spread of the disease in Cote d’Ivoire. ”We must join hands to stop this terrible pandemic,” she said, when addressing a conference on HIV/AIDS organised by the National Partners Against AIDS in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Cote d’Ivoire, on Mar 17.

Ohouochi said the infection rate of the HIV in Cote d’Ivoire is between 10 and 14 percent, depending on the region.

Abidjan, as well as San-Pedro (the country’s second port), Abengourou (a town on the border with Ghana), and Man (a town in the west of the country) are the most hit by HIV/AIDS.

In Mar 2001, Cote d’Ivoire negotiated a 90-percent discount on the price of anti-retroviral drugs with pharmaceutical firms, but only a thousand people have been able to benefit from the treatment. It has left people living with HIV/AIDS sceptical about the benefits of the new grant given by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS.

”We have not yet forgotten what happened to us when the price of anti-retrovirals dropped. The authorities launched a massive publicity drive to announce the reductions, which only profited a tiny fraction of those living with HIV/AIDS,” says Sidonei Kouame of the Ivorian Red Ribbon, an anti-AIDS group based in Abidjan.

”We hope that this time around, we won’t have to get mad the way we did in 2001 when the authorities poorly handled the anti-retroviral drugs price reductions. But if it happens again, we’re not going to let them push us around the way they did before,” warns Kouame.

Ohouochi assured those living with HIV/AIDS that the funds would be managed transparently. And that "responsibilities will be clearly set out, calendars of activities established, and budgets and expected results delineated”. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS grant will be disbursed over a five-year period, making Cote d’Ivoire their number one beneficiary of aid in the sub-region. Togo, Burkina Faso and Guinea received around 20 million U.S. dollars each.

The Ivorian government now wants to make AIDS programme a priority. Before the grant, Cote d’Ivoire had only an assistant minister of health handling AIDS programmes and policies.

The Global Fund was set up in Jan 2002 as a financial instrument, complementary to existing programmes addressing HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which together account for nearly 6 million deaths per year and cause immeasurable suffering and damage to families, communities and economies around the world.

The Global Fund attracts, manages and disburses additional resources through a public-private partnership in order to make a sustainable and significant contribution to reducing the impact caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in countries in need, and contributing to poverty reduction as part of the Millennium Goals, according to a statement, made available to IPS.

To date the Global Fund says it has approved two rounds of proposals with a total commitment of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars over two years to 85 countries.(

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