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Dr Parirenyatwa

Ray Bande Manicaland Bureau
Zimbabwe has surpassed the one million mark of people under anti-retroviral therapy, amid revelations by Health and Child Care Minister Dr David Parirenyatwa that the country has enough drugs to meet the demand. Dr Parirenyatwa said this during a Press conference at Montclair Hotel in Nyanga on the sidelines of the advocacy meeting on sexual reproductive health and Aids in universities last week.

“Equally successful has been our thrust to provide treatment to ensure those infected live longer and can continue to contribute to the development of the nation. As I speak, the number of people receiving anti-retroviral therapy has gone beyond the one million mark and we are very proud as a nation that this has led to the number of people dying due to Aids going down from 3 000 per week in 2005 to less than 1 000. We have not really had a shortage of anti-retroviral drugs in this country. What we only experienced was a shortage of second line drugs because what happens is that if a person is diagnosed HIV positive they go on First Line anti-retroviral treatment. This is the class where we have more people living with HIV falling under and we have never had shortages of those drugs. We only experienced a shortage of a second line drug and people falling under the second line drug treatment only constitute about two percent of the total population of people living with HIV and Aids. We have never had a challenge with first line drugs in the country. If there were any they could have been administrative challenges in the distribution of the drugs and not in the nation’s capacity to acquire the drugs,” he said.

Dr Parirenyatwa bemoaned the increase in HIV incidence among students in institutions of higher learning.

“The trend has been worrisome. The major causes of this increase in the incidence of HIV are poverty and peer pressure.”