Namibia: Close shave for TB patients
USAID has thrown a lifeline to the close to 600 tuberculosis (TB) patients at the Penduka Namibia programme in Katutura.
In mid-December, it was announced that the TB programme would have to be shut down because its funding had dried up.
The crisis came amid the fact that Namibia is one of the worst TB-affected countries in the world - with an annual rise in national figures. Resistance to medication adds fuel to the country's TB fire.
Penduka Namibia general manager Rudolph Tjaveondja said they could not sustain the programme beyond December.
Yesterday, Tjaveondja had good news - the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has come to their rescue and the Global Fund will resume its funding towards next month.
But, he said, they still need financial support to help feed the 556 TB patients. "They need proper food when they take their medication."
If the TB facility had to close its doors, the patients would have had to go to State clinics for treatment, provided they could be accommodated. There was also a fear that they might default on their treatment - which would result in further drug resistance.
In December, the Khomas Regional Health Director, Sakaria Taapopi, said TB in the country is "an emergency that needs action from all of us at household level, at [the] workplace, at school level and everywhere where there are Namibians".
In February last year, the Global Fund withdrew all its financial support to Lironga Eparu, a local HIV-AIDS support organisation, following alleged financial abuse.
Global Fund boss Michel Kazatchkine at the time said: "Transparency is a guiding principle behind the work of the Global Fund and we expect to be held to the highest standards of accountability."
The Global Fund said it was demanding the recovery of an unaccounted amount of US$34 million in some of its donor countries.
Kazatchkine added that the fund "has zero tolerance for corruption and actively seeks to uncover the misuse of funds".
The international funder of projects to fight AIDS, TB and malaria said it "deploys some of the rigorous procedures to detect fraud and fight corruption of any organisation financing development".
Moses Ikanga, the Lironga Eparu board chairperson, slammed the fund, saying the support was pulled as a result of personal grudges against executive director Emma Tuahepa.
Also in February, the partnership of the Global Fund and the Ministry of Health and Social Services claimed another casualty. Pamela Onyango, the Programme Management Unit (PMU) director, was sacked.
Kahijoro Kahuure, the Ministry's Permanent Secretary (PS), gave Onyango the boot.
According to him, she was fired because she used Global Fund money for a TB project without proper approval. He said: "It (the application of the funds) might have been for a good cause, but it was not necessarily approved."
By Denver Kisting
allAfrica.com
