By Hazvinei Mwanaka
MASVINGO-Permanent Secretary in the office of the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs Dr Addmore Pazvakavambwa has assured the public that the province has enough stock of the Anti-retroviral (ARVs) drugs to last for the next seven months and government will not abdicate on its duty to take care of citizens living with HIV and AIDS.
This comes after fears of the shortage of the lifesaving drugs to people on ART after funding suspension by USAID.
Pazvakavambwa gave assurance to those people on ART that they shouldn’t panic as government will not abdicate on its responsibilities after the seven months’ period, adding that development partners only come to complement government with various interventions
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday during a press conference organised by TellZim News on the state of health in the province, Pazvakavambwa added that government is already making modalities to make sure that there will be no shortages after this period.
“In terms of the quantification of how much we have been prejudiced by the withdrawal of the funding, I think that one can be provided at a later stage but we have been checking with the Minister of State Chadzamira, and we have seven months’ supply whilst government is working on alternatives.
“So I want to allay fears that we might prejudice a number of people due to this predicament we find ourselves in. And obviously by then government is not sitting on its laurels. We are working on how we can close that funding gap,” he said.
“The impact so far of course verbally it has been felt, in the long run maybe it will be felt but we have a sort of a buffer period whereby for the seven months I think we will have come up with some lasting solutions to circumvent the problem that have been brought about by the withdrawal,” he said.
In January this year the United Sates announced a 90 –day freeze on US foreign aid and according to the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), this has had a devastating impact on people living with and affected by HIV and on the people and organizations supporting them and the global response to HIV as a whole.
According to UNAIDS, in 2023, 39, 9 million people globally were living with HIV, 1,3 million became newly infected with HIV, 630 000 died from AIDS- related illness and 30,7 million were accessing antiretroviral therapy.
UNAIDS reports that since the start of the epidemic 88,4 million people have become infected with HIV and 42,3 million people have died from AIDS- related illness.