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Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
THE Global Financing Facility (GFF) on Monday availed US$5 million to Zimbabwe to help the country in the fight against Coronavirus (COVID-19).
This was revealed by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube who represented the country during a virtual meeting hosted by the facility on the COVID-19 response.
Posting on his microblogging Twitter account, Prof Ncube said his presentation was poised on emphasizing the need to investment more on the country’s health sector.
“Today I participated in a virtual Global Financing Facility meeting on COVID-19 response. I presented Zimbabwe’s approach of ‘saving lives and saving livelihoods’, which includes social distancing, testing, Personal Protective Equipment needs, isolation centers. GFF allocated US$5 million.
“The countries whose Ministers of Finance participated in today’s (Monday) GFF Investors Group virtual meeting included Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, and Central African Republic. I also made the point that health expenditure is investment, not just a cost,” he said.
The Global Financing Facility was launched at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa in July 2015.
It is a key financing platform and a broad partnership including GAVI, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MSD for Mothers, and the Governments of Canada, Norway, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The GFF is currently supporting 36 countries scale up access to comprehensive community and primary health care services and strengthen their health financing systems, which are critical and closely aligned to countries’ needs for effective pandemic preparedness and response.
@vusadb
Online Reporter