Guyana’s Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) for the Global Fund on TB and malaria suffered a setback yesterday when stakeholders failed to show up for a critical meeting to select new members for three seats on the coordinating body.
The Global Fund is a key donor in the local health sector, financing programmes in the areas of HIV/AIDS; Tuberculosis and Malaria. Substantial disbursements have been made to this country in previous years from the fund, particularly in the area of HIV/AIDS.
The local CCM was established in response to requirements and recommendations of the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and a new CCM has to be constituted within another few weeks. The process of selection to fill 23 seats on the CCM has commenced; only a few seats are left to be filled and nominations were to begin yesterday for three seats.
Sarah Insanally of the Global Fund Secretariat said yesterday that nominations were opened for seats in the areas of Tuberculosis, Malaria and Rural Communities. Insanally was forced to defer the nomination process for malaria due to the poor turnout yesterday. She told Stabroek News the Secretariat would have to contact stakeholders in this field and request nominations for the seat, adding that this would have to be done soon.
Insanally declined to push back the meeting to another date after the suggestion was made yesterday by one of the participants.
Eight persons turned out for the meeting and according to Insanally, invitations went out earlier.
She said too that the local Secretariat exhausted res-ources in media relations to advertise the meeting weeks ago. “We cannot push it back because people were in-formed, they know about it, truth is people do not really show up for this round of the process they all wait for the HIV/AIDS round”, she added.
Insanally pointedly stated that the selection process for the three seats which came up yesterday would only attract a certain number of stakeholders.
She said the large turnout which HIV/AIDS attracts “was not expected today”, but she said they were also not expecting to see eight persons in total.
Therefore, the meeting went ahead as scheduled and persons were nominated for seats in the areas of Tuberculosis and Rural Communities.
Of the persons present no one was nominated for the malaria seat; the interest was not there for this particular area though the mosquito-borne disease is a big problem here.
The persons gathered included community leaders from the areas affected by tuberculosis and malaria and also persons working in the HIV/AIDS sector.
Bonita Woodhouse, one of the founders of a non-governmental organization based in the US travelled to Guyana for the meeting; she got off a plane and had a few minutes of personal time before heading directly to Hotel Tower yesterday. Woodhouse, who works with the United Bridge Builders Mission, later spoke out against what she termed a serious lack of interest in the process among stakeholders here and she called for “people to get serious and let us work on meeting the requirements for this fund”.
Woodhouse said stakeholders in this country are sending the wrong message to the donors and other agencies that are willing to help programmes in the health sector by refusing to show up when they need to. She said the individuals who are involved in the process are hurting Guyana’s image abroad by allowing critical meetings such the one organized yesterday to be reduced to “weak numbers and little participation when interest should be high”.
President of the Guyana Chest Society, Dr. Moti Lall also commented on the turnout yesterday saying he had hoped to see more people there because of how important the Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria fight is.
He said advocacy on behalf of TB needs to be stronger, stressing that more money needs to be pumped into this area to achieve better results.
He said the CCM needs to raise the profile of TB in the country, particularly now that co-infection with HIV/AIDS has become a serious problem in the country.
Dr. Lall noted that TB morbidity remains high and according to him, people are not getting the message. He said the CCM must spread awareness and he also commented that persons selected to take up this particular seat should understand how important the role is. He previously served on the CCM with a focus in this area.
The mandate of the CCM is to coordinate the preparation of proposals to the Global Fund, and to review and approve them prior to submission. It also guides and monitors the implementation of projects financed by the fund. Membership in the CCM is broadly representative of a variety of stakeholders, each representing an active constituency with an interest in fighting one or more of the diseases.
The CCM nomination process is expected to be transparent and democratic.
