Zimbabwe is anxious The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s canceled financing round and pullout announcements from donor agencies might put the country’s fight against AIDS is in a “very precarious position.”
Zimbabwe Public Service Minister Lucia Matibenga said the global economic crisis and consequent withdrawal of funding by some donor agencies will worsen the HIV and AIDS pandemic.
“Major donors such as the MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) and the Expanded Support Programme (ESP) have already announced that they are pulling out,” she said in her speech on World AIDS Day in Mutare, as reported in AllAfrica.com. “These major changes to the funding landscape will no doubt worsen the overall burden of the pandemic.”
Matibenga said Zimbabwe remains heavily burdened with the deadly disease, losing 1,000 people every week to AIDS-related illnesses. And while the country has had more access to anti-retroviral therapy, the progress “is not enough.”
“The recent adoption of the World Health Organisation’s 2010 guidelines for ART has pushed the number of people in urgent need of ART higher, further stifling our financial position with regards to treatment,” she said.
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