Zambia will not meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) target to put 100 000 HIV/Aids-infected people on anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy by the end of the year, the government announced on Monday.
The Southern African country of nearly 11-million people does not have the financial or human resource capacity to meet this target, according to Minister of Health Brian Chituwo.
Targets can only be met if ”we can have the money and technical staff in this short period”, he said.
Chituwo noted that the government will not compromise on the quality of treatment in order to meet this target, adding that 30 000 people — less than half of those needing it — have so far been put on treatment.
Zambia still stands among sub-Saharan Africa’s worst-hit countries in the Aids pandemic, with an infection rate of 16% of the adult population between 16 and 47 years old.
Funds expected to be disbursed from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis are performance-oriented, Chituwo said.
”If you have a constraint like this, already money will not come through,” he said.
The WHO has set a target of an estimated three million HIV/Aids-infected people worldwide on drugs by the end of 2005, with 90% of those in need of treatment living in Africa.
Chituwo said Zambia needs $50-million to purchase laboratory equipment and necessary drugs to roll out ARV therapy to a minimum of 90 000 people in need of it.
”We need money to buy drugs for opportunistic infections and to strengthen ARV therapy outreach teams and programmes in the provinces and districts.”
He said there is a critical shortage of manpower to manage the roll-out.
”Health-care providers and nurses are choked by the Aids epidemic.”
Public health institutions have been hit badly by this shortage of essential medical personnel as a result of significant drain of manpower to countries such as the United Kingdom and United States.
Chituwo said the government has now embarked on training lay people in voluntary counselling and testing services and laboratory technicians to do some of the lighter work to give breathing space to doctors and nurses.
Despite a notable reduction in infection levels, the pandemic has severely affected production levels in the country, and wiped out families leaving in its wake 1,2-million orphans and vulnerable children. — Sapa-DPA