Rwanda and Global Fund launch latest grants to spice up progress in fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and strengthen health systems – News

Rwanda and Global Fund launch latest grants to spice up progress in fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and strengthen health systems

July 3, 2024

– The Global Fund and the Government of the Republic of Rwanda this week began implementing two grants totaling US$174 million. The grants will help sustain and expand Rwanda’s progress within the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, and strengthen health systems and communities across the country through the grant period 2024-2027.

As within the previous grant cycle, the Rwandan Ministry of Health will implement the grants under the Rwanda National Strategy financing model – “Payment for Results” – which is fully owned and driven by the country’s policies, strategies, processes and institutions. Civil society partners and communities most affected by the three diseases will support implementation.

The primary focus of the brand new grants is malaria prevention. In the face of accelerating insecticide resistance, Rwanda and health partners will implement a robust integrated approach to vector management with a gradual transition from indoor residual spraying to the introduction of next-generation mosquito nets in chosen districts. Malaria surveillance will probably be intensified through therapeutic efficacy studies, entomological monitoring to raised understand vector behavior, and community-level improvements to raised goal interventions.

For HIV and AIDS, grants will support the expansion of HIV prevention packages, including long-acting and injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and the vaginal ring PrEP – the primary effective, woman-controlled HIV prevention option. Grants may also support efforts to stop mother-to-child transmission, increase service integration, including noncommunicable diseases and mental health, and reduce human rights barriers to HIV and TB services.

For tuberculosis, the ambition is to accentuate energetic case detection amongst key populations and scale up preventive and treatment interventions, including through using latest technologies akin to portable digital X-rays supported by artificial intelligence.

The latest grants also include funding to strengthen health systems in areas akin to human resources and community systems, disease surveillance, laboratories and diagnostics, medical gas facilities, health product and waste management, and health system digitization. For example, the grants include $2 million in Digital Health Impact Accelerator (DHIA) funding to support the event of an internet health portal that facilitates seamless connection of health records, empowering patients to develop into energetic partners and full owners of their health data. These investments will work along with $99 million in COVID-19 Response Mechanism funding that has supported the country’s COVID-19 response, health system strengthening, and pandemic preparedness since 2020.

The total financing raised through the Global Fund comes on top of Rwanda’s co-financing commitment of USD 283.5 million over 2025-2027.

Rwanda and the Global Fund have been working together since 2003, with combined investment to this point totalling $1.79 billion to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and COVID-19 and to strengthen health systems.

In addition, the Global Fund has worked with the Rwandan Ministry of Health and personal sector partners Mastercard and Microsoft to develop data standards and interoperability as a foundational layer for implementing the ministry’s digital health strategy. The Global Fund can be supporting the Kigali-based HealthTech Africa Centerthat brings together African digital health innovators, ministries of health and financial organisations to refine, test, fund and scale solutions to handle needs across the complete spectrum of world health challenges.

Over the past decade, Rwanda has made significant progress in reducing HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, in addition to constructing a robust health infrastructure and developing fully integrated primary health care services. Key to Rwanda’s success is its community health management model, which has sent trained community medical experts to villages across the country, supporting integrated services to succeed in the last mile.

Rwanda, a donor to the Global Fund, has pledged $3.25 million within the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment in 2022, a 30% increase in comparison with the Sixth Replenishment.