The United Kingdom is to give £3 million (US$5 million) to the World Health Organisation to help it achieve its 3 x 5 programme of work, the Department for International Development (DFID) announced today.
The announcement follows a call earlier this week by UN AIDS Envoy Stephen Lewis for rich nations to begin providing financial support to allow WHO to get on with its 3 x 5 programme. Lewis noted that the British government was one of the few to be actively considering its level of support. WHO needs $100 million in 2004 alone to carry out the work necessary to reach the 3 x 5 goal.
DFID’s support is particularly intended to help WHO advisers work with national governments to strengthen health services so that they can deliver antiretroviral treatments, and to develop training programmes. WHO is seeking to develop a variety of training programmes in partnership with others already working on training activities, and will seek to broker an international consensus on what training should cover, who should be trained and how it should be delivered during the next few months. WHO wants to see 100,000 health care providers and community health workers trained by national programmes by the end of 2005.
A DFID spokesperson said: “The commitment is for the current financial year 2003/2004. Any further commitment to WHO will be assessed on the basis of progress in implementation and need in particular a clear impact on improving broader health services.”
The bulk of the funding will be spent on additional staff costs, mostly for technical advisers based in-country and working directly with national authorities. 480 staff will be redeployed from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva or from other WHO programmes in the field
“Senior staff are being sent from Geneva already which should help ensure future policy prescriptions are grounded in reality,” a DFID spokesperson commented.
UK money will also support a series of guidelines drawn up by international experts together with dissemination of the latest learning about the delivery of ARVs, an issue viewed as particularly important by the UK Department for International Development, which is strongly committed to an evidence-based, pro-poor approach to development. The UK is the second largest donor country after the United States in the AIDS arena, spending £270 million in 2002/2003.