Harare, (New Ziana) – The government is putting in place measures to lessen the impact that the sudden withdrawal of funding for the health sector by the United States government has created, a senior official has said.

Health and Child Care deputy Minister Sleiman Kwidini said this while responding to questions from legislators in the National Assembly on Wednesday.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) recently suspended a grant agreement with a Zimbabwe-based partner as part of a re-evaluation of US foreign aid under the government of President Donald Trump.

Effective January 24 this year, the implementing partner was instructed to halt all activities and minimize costs associated with the award during the suspension period.

Kwidini said the government is working to cover the gap created by the withdrawal of donor funding.

“Yes, there might indeed be an impact on the withdrawal of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from World Health Organisation (WHO),” he said.

“It is now the mandate of the Ministry and the Government to make sure that these programs which were withdrawn from the Ministry are now wholly owned by the Ministry such that we can cover the gap that has been left by the people who were funding us,” he added. Kwidini said issues of HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis were wholly government programs.

“We then had stakeholders who came in to fund those programs. So as we speak right now, our technocrats are making sure that we cover the gap which has been left out by these program implementers because these came in to feed into our policies as a nation.

“Ministry technocrats are in the process of finding out how best we can come up with possible solutions, especially in budgeting and also human capital which was affected by these funds which have been withdrawn.

Basically, the policy is already there and was existing but what has been withdrawn is the support which we were receiving from the funders,” he said.

New Ziana