The Global Fund recently announced that it has stopped the application for round 11 of funding for HIV and Aids in Zimbabwe. We were told they were unable to raise enough funds and that major donors no longer see HIV and AIDS as an emergency compared to issues such as climate change.

In my country people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) are always surprised by the effort, attention and money that is being spent by successful local companies, such as Delta and Mbada Diamonds, on sport. Both companies this year alone poured at least $2million into the soccer league and cup games.

These are not the only two major companies. Econet, Telone, and Old Mutual are performing well on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange yet you rarely hear about them donating money to HIV and AIDS programmes.

While one might argue that they run wellness workplace programmes for their employees, what about the millions of our dear brothers, sisters and orphans who are affected or infected by the pandemic directly or indirectly?

These companies are pouring millions of dollars into sports such as cricket, soccer, tennis and golf but we are quick to rush to international donors looking for funds for our local anti-retroviral therapy (ART) programmes.

Information at hand says that our government is spending at $9 instead of the WHO recommended $34 on health http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/life/health/54890/gnu-spends-9person-on-health.html. So if these corporate companies would pour money into health instead of sport, think how many lives would be saved in our country.

This situation is worsened by the fact that some expanded support programmes are coming to an end in March 2012 and yet we are busy supporting just a few minutes in sport.

Let's drop this culture of ours, where we tend to wait for disasters to get us moving. We need to fix our health system sooner rather than later or nobody will be healthy enough to play sport!