Glory Ife and Chisom Ebih
As part of its contributions to the MenStar Coalition, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) has announced an investment of $25 million to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, dedicated to scaling HIV self-testing. The Catalytic Fund will be made available to a few countries that will potentially include Nigeria.
CIFF announced the contribution at the Global Fund Replenishment Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to the Executive Director for Adolescence at CIFF, Miles Kemplay, CIFF is championing HIV self-testing and other methods to promote self-care as one of the most powerful ways for youth, women and men to take control of their sexual and reproductive health. “People deserve the choice to test when they want, where they want and how they want.”
“The first step to access the fund will be to engage policymakers and implementers in countries likely to be eligible to motivate them to apply in due course. Once the selection process is complete, the governments of the selected countries will need to develop robust strategies and operational plans to be able to access financing, he disclosed.
“The impact of self-testing may be greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the largest number of people living with HIV who do not know their status.
“The CIFF – Global Fund partnership is designed to increase funding for country programs that have ambitious HIV self-testing goals as well as put supportive policies in place for people to easily access self-tests.”
“This investment will contribute significantly to scaling up the pioneering progress of the Unitaid-funded Self Testing in Africa (STAR) Initiative and was supported through partnership with the World Health Organization which, in addition to developing normative and implementation guidance on HIV self-testing, produced country-specific investment cases to guide and optimize partner investments,” he added.