Global Fund withdraws grants to Myanmar.

News Global Fund withdraws grants to Myanmar International agencies are scrambling to raise funds to maintain three fledgling health-care projects in Myanmar, after the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria withdrew grants to the country in August this year. Discussions are underway with donors in Norway, Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan to try to secure the survival of a project which began in January to tackle tuberculosis and initiatives in HIV/AIDS and malaria which commenced in April. Collectively the projects were to have received US$ 98.4 million from the Global Fund over five years, US$ 11.8 million of which has already been disbursed. WHO is also looking at ways to redistribute existing funding to make money available for Myanmar and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, (DPR Korea), which has faced similar funding withdrawals from the Global Fund. " We are doing everything we can to get resources now for Myanmar and DPR Korea. We are promoting horizontal cooperation between WHO country offices, which means that countries like India and Indonesia which have extra funds transfer them to these countries, " said Dr Samlee Plianbangchang, Regional Director of WHO's Regional Office for South East Asia. In the meantime, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Fund's principal recipient in Myanmar, and other agencies are formulating a plan to salvage the remaining US$ 8.3 million of Global Fund financing already disbursed but not yet put to use and agreement was due to be reached by the end of September. " This is to make sure activities continue until other donors can take over, " said Jon Liden, spokesman for the Global Fund. " We feel by leaving behind US$ 11.6 million , nearly a third of the whole grant, it will cushion the transition. " The plan would cover the costs of these health programmes in Myan-mar during a six-month transition to alternative sources of funding for those programmes. The Global Fund's decision to pull out of Myanmar was unprecedented. Previous withdrawal of funding from DPR Korea was for projects that were not yet underway. These two plus Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Ukraine are the only countries that are currently subject to the Global Fund's Additional Safeguards Policy which aims to ensure that funding is used for its intended purpose and not to benefit the government. In nearly half the countries that receive Global Fund grants, the …