Harare — Clinics in remote areas of Mashonaland Central Province have started offering anti-retroviral therapy as part of the National Aids Council's efforts to bring treatment closer to communities.

Previously, people on ART had been travelling long distances to major health care centres to access treatment.

Health staff and people living with HIV and Aids in the province hailed the decentralisation of HIV testing and dispensing of drugs.

Dr Solomon Mukungunugwa, who is based at Concession Hospital, said decentralisation had helped the district surpass their treatment outreach target.

"Decentralisation of HIV testing and drugs supply to other sites has helped us surpass the set target of 3 000 by December 2010. We already have 3 000 people on ART so by 2010 we would have reached around 5 000 patients.

"We managed to establish 15 sites to reduce costs on clients because some would come from as far as Mvurwi, Howard and Henderson and they would end up forking out about US$10 on transport and accommodation," Dr Mukungunugwa said.

Dr Mukungunugwa said they had managed to establish sites at Henderson, Mazowe Citrus, Tsungubvi and Rosa among others.

"Decentralisation has helped us in many ways considering that now we have drugs closer to home than what used to happen in the past when we would fork out a lot of money for transport and food so that we could access the free drugs.

"Those costs are now being avoided because we can walk to the clinic to get our drugs and get back home early," said an HIV patient at Henderson.

"The decentralisation programme has helped a lot because a doctor will be visiting the hospital fortnightly and treats other people as well," said another patient at Henderson.

Mt Darwin district medical officer Dr Budirirai Gwagwa said outreach and decentralisation had helped the district in bringing on board over 4 500 patients on ART.

"Decentralisation has helped the district to initiate more people at a short space of time than what used to happen when we only had two hospitals initiating patients.

"At the moment we are bringing on board patients using local clinics and this has seen more patients coming forward to be tested," he said.

Government medical officer at Karanda Mission, Dr Kwenzakwenkosi Ncube said the outreach programme had lessened the burden on their major hospitals.

The district is primarily served by Mt Darwin Hospital and Karanda Mission. She said they had managed to establish sites at Katsanza, Mukumbura, Dotito and Chawanda among others.

"We can now offer ARVs and collect blood samples at outreach centres.

"Those in the lower valley used to walk for three days to get here for testing and drugs but they can now get their allocations near their homes," she said.

However, health staff bemoaned lack of human resources and fuel as major impediments, saying the allocation of more financing would boost the outreach.

According to the latest estimates released by NAC, about 345 000 adults are in need of ART in Zimbabwe, of whom 150 000 are already receiving assistance in State and donor-aided programmes.