By Linda Asante Agyei
Accra, July 31, GNA – The Ghana HIV and AIDS Network (GHANET) has called on the government to urgently capitalise the National HIV and AIDS Fund to gradually wean Ghana off donor funding.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview, Mr Ernest Amoabeng Ortsin, President of GHANET, said the Fund would serve as a statutory, permanent financial mechanism to transition Ghana from emergency donor reliance towards a self-reliant, domestically funded national HIV response.
He explained that for more than two decades, external partners, primarily the Global Fund and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), had funded more than 70 per cent of Ghana’s HIV commodities, diagnostics, and prevention programmes.
He said the core operational objective of the Fund was to ensure that the 337,435 Ghanaians living with HIV did not experience treatment disruptions.
The Fund is legally mandated to finance Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), direct procurement of life-saving medications, diagnostic tools, reagents, CD4 count kits, viral load testing supplies, prevention technologies, condoms, Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), including long-acting biomedical innovations.
Mr Ortsin suggested that resources from the National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) could be considered to finance the Fund, describing it as a “low-hanging fruit”.
“I thought the COVID-19 Fund would be converted into a preparedness fund,” he added.
He maintained that the National HIV and AIDS Fund must be fully seeded to prevent stock-outs and coverage disruptions when international partners shift their priorities.
The National HIV and AIDS Fund was legally established under Part Four of Act 938, which repealed the earlier Ghana AIDS Commission Act, 2002 (Act 613).
Enacted to place the Ghana AIDS Commission under the administrative oversight of the Office of the President, the law created the Fund as a permanent statutory vehicle to mobilise domestic financial resources and cushion the country against international funding volatility.
Under Act 938, the Fund is designed to serve four main strategic purposes: commodity procurement, community interventions, research and surveillance, and sustainable domestic financing.
Commodity procurement involves securing an uninterrupted national supply of ART drugs, diagnostic testing kits, viral load reagents, and condoms.
Community interventions focus on financing grassroots prevention, peer counselling, anti-stigma campaigns, and Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) initiatives.
Research and surveillance support local epidemiological studies, routine surveillance, and monitoring led by the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) and research institutions.
Sustainable domestic financing seeks to create a permanent financial buffer as major international partners, including PEPFAR and the Global Fund, gradually transition their financial support.
Dr Fred Nana Poku, Director of Technical Services at the GAC, said since the passage of Act 938, the Commission had established operational guidelines, including the National HIV Prevention Roadmap (2026–2028), to define resource allocation frameworks.
He said work had also progressed on tracking compliance among Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs), which were required to allocate between 0.5 and one per cent of their District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) allocations to local HIV activities.
“Additionally, technical engagements continue between the Ministry of Health, GAC, and the National Health Insurance Authority to integrate routine HIV screening and baseline diagnostics into the National Health Insurance Scheme benefit package,” he said.
However, despite these policy frameworks, the Fund faces a major operational challenge: the lack of dedicated seed capitalization.
The Fund currently relies on periodic government allocations rather than a continuous statutory revenue stream or fully activated corporate levy.
The National HIV and AIDS Fund represents a critical legislative mechanism for protecting Ghana’s health sovereignty, and the establishment of a dedicated statutory funding source is key to safeguarding the health of people living with HIV and achieving the global 95-95-95 targets by 2030.
Mr Ortsin also called for greater private sector integration, saying it was no longer an option but a necessity for sustainable national health programming.
“The sustainability of our fight lies in our ability to invest locally. Over-reliance on international funding leaves our national HIV programmes vulnerable to global economic and political shifts, as well as unpredictable donor freezes,” he said.
GNA
Edited by Audrey Dekalu
Reporter: Linda Asante Agyei
Email: [email protected]