KIGALI - The Global Fund has given a grant of Rwf26bn to the government as facilitation in the fight against tuberculosis in the next three years.

The grant agreement was signed this week between the Minister of Health, Dr. Richard Sezibera and the WHO Representative, Dr. Jack Abdoulie, on behalf of the Global Fund.

Abdoulie said that Rwanda’s experience was an important lesson to the Global Fund and other countries in the perspective of funding disease national strategic plans instead of multiple projects as it used to be.

In an interview, the Head of the TB unit in TRAC plus, Dr. Michel Gasana, noted that for a while, the unit has been mobilizing for these funds to support the National Tuberculosis Control Strategic Plan of 2010-2013.

"We are glad that our country is the first to benefit from such a fund for the fight against TB and this plan will begin on July 1 this year and end June 30, 2013,” Gasana said.

"It will contribute to reducing morbidity and mortality through increasing TB and Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR TB) case detection, maintaining high treatment success rate for TB and MDR-TB and decreasing TB and TB-HIV death rate”.

The TB expert explained that apparently, there are no figures that clearly define the situation of the problem in the country and the fund will facilitate collection of data through a baseline survey.

"What we are sure of is that so far, about 98 percent of TB-HIV cases are under treatment because we test for TB and HIV simultaneously. In most health facilities, there are risks of TB transmission so the money will help improve the situation.”

Procurement of first line and second line anti-TB drugs; Procurement of diagnosis equipments, consumables, diagnosis and treatment of TB, Routine TB screening and active screening of TB in high risk groups will also be carried out.

The fund will also contribute to the performance based financing system in all health facilities.

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