BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – His Majesty King Mswati III has been hailed for leading an aggressive fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Global Fund’s Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Advocate Dlamini said the King donated money on various occasions towards the Global Fund. He said this today when the National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA) was briefing members of the media on how the Global Fund operated. The briefing was at Hilton Garden Inn, Mbabane.
Dlamini said Global Fund had what he termed as replenishment. “You will remember that His Majesty King Mswati III has been one of the leaders who was taking the replenishment serious by making some donations towards Global Fund. At some point in time, he donated $6 million (E111 044 100) and recently, when we had the replenishment hosted in United States of America (USA), which was hosted by President Joe Biden, he also donated $1 million (E18 507 350),” Dlamini said.
The CEO said the King had been standing up to make sure that Eswatini participated in these functions. According to Dlamini, the countries that participated did not just remain beneficiaries to Global Fund, but they were taken as partners. He said the donations were used to grant countries that needed help in terms of fighting these three diseases that Global Fund focused on.
He said once the funds were collected, the Global Fund would write an allocation letter, to inform the CCM about an amount that was supposed to be received by the country. In response to that, the CCM, according to Dlamini, would have to write a grant application to Global Fund to get the money. Dlamini mentioned that the CCM was the one that implemented the Global Fund programmes.
According to the CEO, Global Fund did not physically implement its programmes, but it did that through the CCM. He mentioned that the CCM had constituencies that helped in advising the CCM on how to implement these programmes. The constituencies, according to Dlamini, included several Government ministries, such as the Economic Planning and Development, Finance, Tinkhundla Administration and Development, and Housing and Urban Development.
Other constituencies included female sex workers, the LGBTQI community, public transport workers and operators, among others. He said NERCHA and the Coordinating Assembly of Non-Governmental Organisations (CANGO) were the principal receivers of the fund.
