Anti-Aids campaigners brace for tough financial times as donor funding shrinks

• State turns down proposal by civil groups to set up a trust fund to fight scourge

Thousands of civil society groups fighting HIV and Aids are set for hard times as the Treasury turns down a funding proposal.

A plan to set up an Aids trust fund has hit a snag as donors downgrade HIV emergency status.

According to Ms Evelyn Kibuchi, the tuberculosis manager at the Kenya Aids NGOs Consortium (Kanco), the anti-Aids campaigners had written to the Ministry of Finance requesting a comprehensive funding for HIV from public coffers but this has been turned down over what government says is lack of funds. (READ: Patients demand more funds for Aids drugs)

Kanco has a membership of 1,200 organisations involved in HIV related activities but, according to Ms Kibuchi, many more groups work outside this membership.

With the decline of funds and the downgrading of HIV emergency status, she says, most of the smaller groups will have to become more innovative, otherwise they will have to close shop.

In a 2009 census carried out by the National NGOs Coordination Board, the majority of the over 5,000 such organisations were involved in HIV programmes. This does not include the many community organisations found in all parts of the country.

According to the National Aids Control Council (Nacc), it has one of the most diverse and extensive set of civil society partners where an estimated 14,000 of them are currently engaged in HIV and Aids-related activities.

The first signs of trouble came to the fore last year when the Global Fund informed Kenya and several other countries that they were not eligible to apply for the next round of funding because it was running short of cash.

Later in October the global organisation was to cut all new funding for a period of two years.

Faced with a shrinking funding base, civil groups increased pressure on the government to either step up its funding through the national budget or establish a national Aids trust fund to be funded through special taxation from earmarked corporates.

However, sources close to the lobbyists indicate that the establishment of an Aids Trust Fund has been strongly opposed by local airlines and mobile phone companies who say any extra taxes on their services to support the fund would be an unwelcome burden to customers.

“One airline has actually argued that such a tax could hurt the local tourism industry as it would make travelling to Kenya expensive,” said a source who has been involved in the negotiations.

Source of concern

In the last few months, the minister for Special Programmes, Ms Esther Murugi, has accused her Health counterparts Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o and Mrs Beth Mugo of failing to support the idea of a trust fund.

Ms Murugi under whose docket the highly donor-dependent National Aids Control Council (Nacc) falls, has been under intense pressure from local and international NGOs to provide political muscle for the push for more funding.

This pressure has been spearheaded by the US Advocacy for Health GAP.

The Nacc boss, Prof Alloys Orago, says that the shrinking of funding to HIV programmes is a source for concern and could deal a deadly blow to the fight against HIV and Aids.

However, Prof Orago has asked the civil groups not to panic since there is about Sh85 billion from the Global Fund targeted for the next four years.