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Government not serious about HIV/Aids
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
December 01, 2006

Today is World Aids Day but what is clear to the majority of Zimbabweans is that the regime has absolutely no respect for the people's right to health.

The government has dismally failed to deal with HIV/AIDS, and to provide basic primary health care services to the population. Three thousand five hundred people die needlessly of AIDS related illnesses every week, a condition that has effectively been reduced to a chronic manageable condition by the advent of antiretroviral therapy (ARV's). Yet of the approximately 321 000 people needing therapy now, only 40 000 have been able to access therapy. The rest have been left to die, while ZANU PF leaders and their families use looted state funds to seek medical attention outside the country.

The government boasts of reducing the prevalence rate of HIV from 33% down to 18,1%. This is a serious deception to the people of Zimbabwe, and to the whole world. While we applaud Zimbabweans for reducing the rate of new infections through behaviour change, we wish to point out that the reduction in prevalence rate is largely due to the high numbers that die every day. If the government provided ARVs to everyone who needs them, the prevalence rate would remain more or less constant, because far fewer people would be dying of HIV related illnesses.

In other words, we are reducing the prevalence rate by allowing 3 500 to die unnecessarily every week. Compared with countries with a greater ARV coverage like Botswana: their prevalence rates are far much less. (Of the 84 000 people requiring ART in Botswana, 56 000 were already receiving treatment as at end of 2005).

Other indices of health like Infant mortality rate have deteriorated considerably over the last five years. Secondary and tertiary institutions are completely dysfunctional, plagued by shortages of all basics like medicines, medical and surgical consumables, food, and doctors and nurses. Hospitals have become death traps for the people. The incessant strikes by junior doctors demanding humane working conditions are testimony to this. The alleged death of five patients at Ingutsheni hospital from malnutrition last month is worrisome, yet it represents only a tip of the iceberg.

Other problems bedeviling this sector were aptly highlighted by the Health Services Board, namely:

• Unprecedented staff exodus and low morale for those remaining
• Ineffectiveness of the referral system
• Ill-equipped training schools, coupled withshortage of tutors
• General shortage and lack of equipment and skilled personnel
• Poor remuneration, lack of accommodation and other incentives for personnel in this unique sector
• Inadequate funding for the health sector over the last decade.
• Shortages of essential drugs including ARVs.

The assault on the people's right to health is further aggravated by the failure of the government to deal with other issues that impact on the people's health, namely: access to clean water (even in towns), provision of basic shelter (Operation Murambatsvina was an act against the people's welfare and right to health), proper sanitation (our suburbs are teeming with raw sewage), failure to reduce poverty among the people, failure to ensure there is enough food for all Zimbabweans, and failure to adequately provide for vulnerable groups like the orphans, widows, the elderly, and the physically and mentally challenged.

The MDC believes it is the government's primary responsibility to set up and maintain a health care delivery system that not only works, but is also properly funded. An MDC government will ensure that the right to health of every citizen, not just the rich and famous, is respected through prioritizing health care ahead of military expenditure, through poverty reduction initiatives, through solid consistent funding to public health institutions, including tertiary institutions, and prioritization of primary health care and preventive medicine.

The people of Zimbabwe demand a government that cares, that has strategies to deal with the current health and economic crisis, and that does not pass blame to other governments. We further demand that the government scales up access to ARV therapy so that all the people of Zimbabwe requiring therapy will get it. We speak in solidarity with those among us living with HIV/AIDS and hereby demand that their health care needs to be attended to as a matter of urgency. Today, on World Aids Day, we pray that those among us living with HIV/Aids will have access to ARVs.

In the new Zimbabwe that we envision, health care will be a basic right and not a priviledge. A new Zimbabwe is possible.

Dr. Henry Madzorera
MDC Secretary for Health

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