The Guyana Global Fund – Country Coordinating Mechanism (GF/CCM) – Two new representatives selected to sit on the Regional Coordinating Mechanism

On March 26, 2018, the Guyana Global Fund-Country Coordinating Mechanism (GF/CCM) held its first CCM Meeting for 2018 in the Ministry of Education’s 26 Brickdam boardroom.

The meeting was chaired by the Minister of Education, Hon. Nicolette Henry who is the elected Chair of Guyana’s CCM. The main focus of this meeting was to give representatives from the Ministry of Public Health (the Principle Recipient) the opportunity to inform the CCM Members and Alternates on the programmatic performance of the TB, Malaria and HIV programs, present the CCM Oversight Committee Visits Report for 2017, reconstitute of the Oversight Committee, select a member alternate for the Regional Coordinating Mechanism for the Global Fund, endorse the TB Programme Assessment for Continued Funding and endorse a Re-programming Request for the Malaria Programme. 

Country Dialogues

Also on the agenda was the endorsement of the TB and Malaria programs continuation requests. The CCM has already held three stakeholder consultations referred to as Country Dialogues where the Principal Recipient, the Ministry of Public Health explains the key findings of the assessment to inform programme continuation.

This includes a review of the current epidemiological context, intended changes to national policies and initiatives to maximize resources for greater impact. In addition, a summary of the current grant performance and gaps identified during the implementation process was presented.

The Country dialogue is an open, inclusive and participatory process that includes implementers from the public sector, the private sector, civil society, academia, networks of key affected populations including women organizations, people most vulnerable based on the epidemiological context, including people living with the disease, bilateral, multilateral and technical partners and other key stakeholders.

Selection of the RCM representatives

CCM members were also called upon to vote for a member and alternate to represent the Guyana CCM on the PANCAP Regional Coordinating Mechanism (RCM). That organization is responsible for overseeing Global Fund funded projects in the Caribbean. The elected representatives are Mr. Alex Foster and Dr. Nadia Liu.

Oversight
The CCM Members and Alternates were also given a preview of the over-side report for the period January-June 2017. This report was presented by Dr. Martin Odiit, UNAIDS Country Representative for Guyana and Suriname.

While presenting a summation of the report, Dr. Odiit recognized that Guyana is showing great progress against HIV, with gradually increasing coverage of people receiving antiretroviral treatment. “Over the years, Guyana has reported a decline in TB cases. However, HIV/TB co-infection still remains a challenge in the country. Malaria is endemic in Guyana, particularly in remote regions,” he said.

The main purpose of the oversight was to ascertain the status and functioning of the Global Fund grants from January to June 2017 in the three programme areas, operations and conditions with particular reference to factors and circumstances that contribute to providing “adequate and accessible medical services and facilities.”

Dr. Odiit explained that the Oversight requires the CCM to understand how the grants are working, follow progress and challenges, and make recommendations to the PR on improving performance. Additionally, oversight is one type of monitoring, focused on governance.

The approach used for this process were oversight visits to programme implementation facilities and interviews of managers of the HIV, TB and Malaria Programmes. The visits were conducted in Regions 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10.

The investment to date from the Global Fund stands at US $47,115,561; and the running Global Fund grants during 2017 were: HIV (2015 – 2017), TB and Malaria (2016 – 2018).