The National Health Insurance was chosen this year as the recipient for the Global Fund Project - which provides funding to fight against diseases such as HIV and Tuberculosis. And the NHI is partnering with other organizations such as BFLA and the Ministry of Health. These organizations all attended a ceremony today to officially sign an agreement for the disbursements of funds.
The general manager of NHI explained more about the funding, while the executive director of BFLA and the Director of Public Health and Wellness at MOH both spoke about how they will use the money, specifically to target those living with HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Ramon Figueroa, General Manager, NHI
"The national health insurance has been nominated and approved officially as the principal recipient for this cycle of the global fund project 2022/2024. Before that the previous cycle it was the UNDP and this is I won't say the first time in a long time that national entity has become the principal recipient for this global fund project. Today what transpired was the actual handing over of the resources, the financial resources as per the national response plan for activities that each recipient is supposed to carry out in this first quarter of this year."
Joan Burke Skeen, Executive Director, BFLA
"We have what we call an essential package of services that we provide as an organization and so that is one of those services is HIV testing and so definitely what global fund does for us is to complement what we do as an association. Also, because we are sexual rights advocates, we ensure that our services we do not discriminate and so having been the recipient for the fund area that deals specifically with key populations. This assists the association in meeting the key packs that we work with particularly the men who have sex with men, so it strengthens our ability to reach that population."
Dr. Melissa Diaz
"The Ministry of Health have work closely with National Aids Commission and as well with global fund before to target populations that are more difficult to populations who don't seem to access care that we want to them to access, including patients with HIV, tuberculosis and other areas as well. So working with the partners and collaborating with CSO hub and BFLA hand in hand we hope to meet our targets for our country with the improvement and the strengthening of this collaboration. We are very optimistic and we feel that we will be able to meet our targets and we will be able to ensure that populations who don't usually access will feel free and feel more comfortable to access care and to get the treatment and testing that they require."
