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U.S. looks beyond crisis intervention in Zim's health sector
U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section
January 29, 2010

The United States is providing assistance to the Government of Zimbabwe in its efforts to rebuild infrastructure and restore basic services in the health sector, top U.S. Embassy officials said on Wednesday.

"The U.S. looks forward to working with the Government of Zimbabwe and our local and international partners to help improve Zimbabwe's health care system and the health and well being of all the people of Zimbabwe," said the U.S. Ambassador Charles Ray.

Ambassador Ray handed over 50,000 personal protective clothing kits for influenza preparedness donated by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Ministry of Health in Harare. The event, attended by the Minister of Health and Child Welfare Dr. Henry Madzorera and WHO Inter Country Support Coordinator Dr. Oladapo Walker, was witnessed by nearly 50 representatives of government and non-governmental partners in the health sector.

"We believe our joint effort with WHO to protect Zimbabweans and others in the region against H1N1 influenza is a vital part of a broader effort to bolster our response capabilities in every part of the globe because a virus has no respect for borders and can arise in any corner of any continent," said Ambassador Ray.

In May 2009, President Barack Obama announced the Global Health Initiative as part of a 63 billion USD effort to support partner countries in improving and expanding access to health services.

Ray explained that the initiative is an ambitious one aimed at building health care systems to address some of the greatest challenges for countries around the world including child and maternal health, family planning, neglected tropical diseases, and HIV and AIDS.

Announcing the content of the donation, USAID Country Director Karen Freeman said the United States was ready to scale up support in various programs implemented jointly with the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.

"Our plans are moving beyond the crisis management required in the past few years to providing assistance to the Government of Zimbabwe in its efforts to rebuild infrastructure and restore basic services," said Freeman.

She added that USAID programming in the next five years will continue to prioritize HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, and care including the scale up of male circumcision programs, expansion of programs for behavioral change counseling, prevention of mother to child transmission, and care of orphans and vulnerable children.

"Zimbabwe has the foundations of a world class public health system and the U.S. is ready to assist in rebuilding from bottom up whether by providing equipment to protect against infectious influenza, by training health care workers, or by working with our counterparts in health care to improve access to services in rural Zimbabwe," said the USAID Director.

Accepting the donation, Minister of Health Dr. Henry Madzorera noted that Zimbabwe had confirmed 41 cases of the pandemic influenza H1N1 from a total of 50 specimens that were sent to the South African National Institute of Communicable Diseases recently. He said 253 probable cases were treated in health institutions in Manicaland, Harare, Mashonaland East, and Midlands.

"The support has given my Ministry a great deal of mileage in terms of the preparedness and response readiness to the pandemic influenza," said Madzorera.

The donation by USAID follows an earlier delivery of protective clothing, worth US$27,121, that arrived in Zimbabwe in 2007. The equipment donated on January 27, valued at US$465,000, will be used by health care workers in Zimbabwe and throughout Southern Africa in the event of an outbreak of H1N1 virus. WHO will store the stock in its warehouse until the materials are needed.

"This equipment will be critical to the people of Zimbabwe in the event of an outbreak of H1N1 virus," commented Freeman. "We are committed to helping Zimbabweans combat the H1N1 flu and other diseases at the community level."

WHO Inter Country Support Coordinator, Dr. Oladapo Walker, hailed the collaboration between WHO and the governments of Zimbabwe and the U.S.

He said his organization's global monitoring system had recorded 14,142 deaths in 209 countries and more than 340,000 cases. He said 15,000 cases of H1N1 had been recorded in Africa. Of those, 107 deaths were in Eastern and Southern Africa but advised that flexibility was necessary to avert other epidemics.

USAID, in collaboration with WHO, is in the process of pre-positioning 200,000 personal protective equipment kits in African countries in order to provide adequate and appropriate protection for preparedness, training, surveillance, and outbreak response activities.

The kits are part of a larger Humanitarian Pandemic Preparedness Initiative (H2P) now in place across 25 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East that are considered the most vulnerable to the effects of a pandemic. The initiative builds on critical capacities USAID developed to fight H5N1 avian influenza and to support pandemic readiness. Since 2005, the USAID Avian and Pandemic Influenza Response Unit has overseen the programming of US$658 million in support of pandemic preparedness and response programs in 54 countries.

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