CIRCB 2021 Budget Effectively Executed

The president of the Management Board of the Chantal Biya International Reference Centre for Research on Prevention and Management of HIV/AIDS (CIRCB), in Yaoundé, Jean Stéphane Biatcha has congratulated the administration of CIRCB for the effective execution of the 2021 budget of the institution within a difficult context marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. He was speaking during the 8^th ordinary session of the Management Board of the research Centre.                                                  The session, chaired in the presence of other members and guests focused on answering certain questions such as: How much of the 2021 funds were effectively mobilized as programmed in the budget ? How was the budget executed? What were the challenges faced?

Speaking to the press, the Director General of CIRCB, Professor Alexis Ndjolo said the 2021 budget stood at about 5.5 billion FCFA. He explained that mobilizing funds for the establishment was very difficult within the Covid-19 context; 42 to 46 percent of the budget was mobilized. The money, Prof Ndjolo said, was effectively used. According to the Director General of CIRCB, a majority of the 2021 budget of the Centre came from the government that is 80 percent and 20 percent was from funds generated from research grants and other partners. It was also revealed that the investment budget was mobilized only at 17 percent. The Director General said in a research center, money is needed to acquire certain apparatus and when the funds are not effectively mobilized, they cannot do what they wanted to do. Hence, he suggested to the Management Board to review the subvention and income policy in a bid to improve funding of the projects in the research center on time. He also pleaded with the board to ensure that the subvention money require by the institution is given as requested.

The Deputy General Manager of the Centre, Dr Godwin Nchinda said the center intends to generates as much resources needed and also collaborate with national and international partners to obtain the require funding to function and carry out research . The money will be used to continue research on HIV, training of health workers in Cameroon, project on the early infant diagnoses of HIV, which is being carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health among others. So far, the Centre has effectively oriented doctors for better results in taking care of HIV patients. In the years ahead, there is hope to further reduce the transmission of HIV from mother to child. Today, the transmission rate of HIV from mother-to-child stands at about 5 percent and they hope to reduce it to 0 percent.