Zimbabwe’s war on AIDS threatened by cash crunch

	Tweet

Zimbabwe, one of the countries worst hit by the AIDS, is not getting enough money to fight the epidemic, the main U.N. agency coordinating the programme said on Sunday.

Zimbabwe, with about a quarter of its adult population infected with HIV or with AIDS, received $60 million from the U.S. government and other donor groups last year, Karl Dehne, the Zimbabwe head of U.N. agency UNAIDS, told Reuters.

But that was a trickle compared even with smaller nations in the Southern Africa region.

Dehne said Zimbabwe received nothing last year from the World Bank’s Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Programme for Africa and the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and neither the World Bank nor the International monetary Fund have had a programme in Zimbabwe since 1999.

No official reasons for the cash shortage have been given, but some donor officials say concerns over Zimbabwe’s internal policies have been a factor in deciding on aid to Harare.

Some countries in the region last year received as much as $200 million from individual agencies to fight AIDS, Dehne said. “What is certain is that Zimbabwe has been receiving much less than its neighbours.

“We can do much more if we got more funds and we appeal to the donor community for this,” Dehne said. “Zimbabwe gets significantly less than its neighbours, such as Zambia or Swaziland.”

Zimbabwe has faced economic and political problems over the past five years sparked by President Robert Mugabe’s campaign to redistribute white-owned farms to landless blacks.

The country will hold parliamentary elections on March 31. While both the ruling ZANU-PF party and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) pledge in their manifestos to step up the war on AIDS, politicians say little about AIDS in their public campaigns.

Carol Bellamy, head of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, said this month that AIDS kills a Zimbabwean child every 15 minutes.

UNICEF says the under-5 mortality rate has risen 50 percent since 1990 and the rate is now 1 death for every 8 births. In addition 1 in 5 Zimbabwean children are orphans and 160,000 children will suffer the death of a parent this year.

Although he did not have conclusive data, Dehne said the good news from Zimbabwe is that the infection rate had slowed among some groups—condom use had risen sharply over the past few years indicating people are changing their sexual behaviour while the rates among adults appear to be steady.

RELATED STORIES:
The six habits of highly respectful physicians   Ethiopia children at risk of malnutrition   Pharmaceutical conservation key to slowing rise of antibiotic-resistant infections   Goodbye to folic acid deficiency?   Medicare drug plan to help poorest elderly most   SARS Vaccine To Be Tested On American Volunteers   Existing Call Centers Can Expand Communications in Public Health Emergencies   Google search engine flags flu activity in U.S.   Role of Statins in Reducing H1N1 Mortality Rates Studied   Heart devices may cost Medicare $2 billion   Senate’s Frist sees $14 billion Medicaid savings   Drop in smoking cuts cancer deaths in Europe

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]