Global Fund stops giving to Zambia

Another organization has stopped giving money to Zambia because of charges of fraud. The Global Fund has said they have stopped giving to Zambia's ministry of health until the charges of embezzling public funds are cleared up. Last spring, the governments of Sweden and the Netherlands made similar freezes against Zambia.

From All Africa, writer Elias Mbao tells us more about the Global Fund's statement on the matter.

According to a report issued by The Global Fund's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) after the 21st board meeting in Geneva held between April 28 and 30, 2010, the fund would not proceed with signing any new grants to the ministry until it was satisfied that the situation was under control.

"The (Zambian) national authorities have failed thus far to provide assurances of appropriate action regarding fraud against Global Fund grant programs. In October 2009, during the audit of all grants within Zambia, the OIG audit team uncovered further evidence of fraud and other irregularities within the Global Fund grant programmes in the MoH, in particular multiple apparently fraudulent allowance claims by senior members of the MoH staff," it stated, adding that an OIG investigation team was deployed to Zambia and in November 2009.