Foster Dongozi
13 November 2005
NEARLY one million Zimbabweans in urgent need of treatment cannot access the life-saving Anti-Retroviral drugs, The Standard has been told.
People living with HIV and AIDS face certain death as they are unable to get ARVs from government referral hospitals such as Parirenyatwa, Harare, Mpilo in Bulawayo, and Chitungwiza.
Activists and advocacy specialists in the fight against HIV and AIDS met last week and recommended that the government treat the HIV and AIDS pandemic as a national emergency.
Official figures, say up to 700 000 out of just over two million people living with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe, are in urgent need of ARVs.
However, only 12 000 Zimbabweans are on ARVs.
Under the Global Fund scheme an estimated 270 000 people should by now be accessing ARVs.
AIDS service organizations have, as a result, started working on a petition, on the apparent failure to take the distribution of the life-saving drugs seriously, which will be presented to President Robert Mugabe.
Mary Sandasi, the director of Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN) said the government needed to show that it was serious about combating the pandemic and providing treatment.
Sandasi said: "The government has already declared that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is an emergency and therefore the petition is meant to make sure the leadership treats the issue like an emergency."
Continued delays in availing treatment, the anti-AIDS activist said, would result in the ruling class leading a country of orphans.
She said the petition would be copied to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.
Sandasi fears people living with HIV and AIDS could start developing resistance to ARVs because of interruption to supplies.
However, the CEO of Parirenyatwa, Thomas Zigora, said ARVs were being distributed at the hospital.
He said: "As of now the Opportunistic Infections Clinic at Parirenyatwa has a register of up to 250 infants and 300 plus adults who are accessing ARVs. Those on the register are getting the drugs."
Another AIDS activist, Sostain Moyo of the Zimbabwe Activists on HIV and AIDS (ZAHA), said: "Thousands of people will soon be dying when the effect of not getting AIDS drugs becomes apparent. A lot of these people will die because they would have developed resistance to the ARV drugs."
Moyo also implored international organizations not to abandon people living with HIV and AIDS because of differences with the Zimbabwean administration.
"HIV/AIDS does not discriminate along political lines. Our neighbours in the region are getting a lot of ARVs and we hope the international community will not continue to shun us because of political differences."
The deputy minister of Health, Edwin Muguti said the lack of foreign currency had affected the operations of most aspects of the economy.
"Our economy is not operating at 100 percent capacity and that means some areas will be affected like fuel supply and the provision of drugs. There is no doubt that there is need to increase the number of people on ARVs but with insufficient funding, that will always present challenges. We hope our partners like UNAIDS, UNICEF and WHO will complement our efforts to ensure as many people as possible access the drugs."
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