Principal Recipients (PRs) of the Global Fund including Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MOHS), Catholic Relief Service (CRS), National HIV/AIDS Secretariat (NAS) and Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) for Global Fund, together with selected Sub Recipients (SRs) participants on 7th August, 2019 commenced a two days Global Fund Country Portfolio 2019 Retreat held at the Place Resort, Tokeh Village, Western Rural district.

Participants of the aforementioned institutions in the retreat were expected to deliberate extensively and bring out the root causes of low absorptions of the past Global Fund Grants for Sierra Leone.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, CCM Coordinator at Global Fund, Lynton Michael Tucker disclosed that the significance of the retreat was for PRs and Selected SRs identify the challenges encountered.

The low fund absorption he said is a situation wherein the country losing money and not meeting the set target by Global Fund in the implementation of projects and programmes especially in fighting against dangerous and killer diseases including HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in a certain period of time.

According to him, during the retreat they would be able to identify strategic actionable interventions targeting root causes in order to increase absorption rate for Sierra Leone.

Expressing dissatisfaction why a poor country like Sierra Leone losing such grant to donors, he said at the end of the retreat everyone would be able to know where they are and where they want to move forward in the implementation of various programmes.

He said for 2016-2019 years, Sierra Leone received 98 Million United States Dollars as grant for implementation of various programmes in the fight against these killer diseases in the country.

UN Family Representative, Dr. Hamid EL Bashir Ibrahim commended CCM for organizing the retreat and called on participants to come up with analytical and objective strategies on how to move forward in promoting healthcare service delivery in the country.

The Deputy Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Anthony Augustine Sandy disclosed that at the end of the retreat, the ministry expects participants to genuinely come up with actionable recommendations that will continue to guide the process of improving the implementation of the current grants.

According to him, his ministry will be working with the Ministry of Finance and the CCM Board to continuously track the absorption rates and targets achieved from the current grants.

He assured the participants that under the New Direction government, low absorptions of Global Fund Grants would be thing of the past.