3D Fund annual review meeting held

3D Fund annual review meeting held
By Aye Aye Myo

GAINING trust and improving people’s lives – these are the accomplishments of the Three Diseases Fund (3DF) over the past year, donors heard last week.
The fund held its 2009 Annual Review Meeting at Sedona Hotel on October 14 to describe its fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.

In 2008, partner agencies provided 6804 people living with HIV with antiretroviral therapy (ART), representing 45 percent of ART treatment in the country. They successfully treated some 27,800 TB patients and around 712,600 malaria cases. HIV prevention reached some 633,500 people and behaviour change communication on TB 131,610 clients.

“The main achievement of the fund is that it proved it worked effectively and contributed to improving and saving the lives of thousands,” Mr Bengt Ekman, chair of the Fund Board and representative of Sweden in the Donor Consortium, said.

Doctors implementing the project have to solve a lot of problems such as transparency and language barriers. “When we survey peoples’ behaviour for HIV/AIDS among sex workers and young people, victims talk only to people they trust. So we have to work through people they are familiar with so that we can know true facts about risk percentage and mis-behaviour,” Dr Aye Sandar Aung from World Vision told The Myanmar Times.




According to Dr Aye Mar Lwin from Malteser International, the only difficulty is the language barrier. Patients talk to the doctors through interpreters. But surprisingly, people in remote areas do not shun clinics as they used to and attend when they feel ill. Only the ethnic minorities in hilly regions rarely come, she said, adding that the organisation is trying to extend their reach further into remote areas.

3DF describes itself as the biggest single-pooled fund in the health sector in Myanmar, with a commitment of US$114 million over the five-year period that began in October 2006 and will end in 2011. Donor contributions have amounted to $71.5 million on behalf of the European Commission, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
http://www.mmtimes. com/no494/ n003.htm