2,000 infected every month – governor

ling of Zimbabwe’s healthcare system – which is threatening the free antiretroviral (ARV) programme – to sanctions imposed by western nations.
“Only 42,000 people are on anti-retroviral drugs out of a possible 171,000,” Karimanzira said, adding government was battling to set aside US$250,000 to procure HIV drugs every month.
Zimbabwe has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV infection and is currently under going a severe economic crisis. The prevalence rate for HIV has declined from 20,1 percent in 2005 to 18,1 percent in 2006, but 3,000 still die to the disease in Zimbabwe every week. Karimanzira said 2,000 people were getting infected every month.
Karimanzira said the government’s response to the AIDS crisis has been to declare a state of emergency in 2002, allowing cheaper generic drugs to be imported as well as locally made under World Trade Organisation rules.
But local generic drug manufacturers are hamstrung by the scarcity of foreign currency, which they need to import raw materials to make the ARVs.
Karimanzira said there were more than 80,000 orphans and vulnerable children and 6,000 people living openly with HIV/AIDS in the Harare province.
He said there was serious donor fatigue. After a three-year delay, a US $10.3 million grant by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is finally making its way to Zimbabwe. But activists have stressed that this paled in comparison to what countries “just across the (Zambezi) river” were receiving from international donors.
Nevertheless, AIDS NGOs are managing to make a difference.
But aid workers said the brutal Operation Murambatsvina last year had compounded the problem as many were displaced and their treatment programmes disrupted. – Own correspondent