Harare, (New Ziana) – Zimbabwe has sufficient stocks of HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria medicines, and additional supplies are being purchased, Health and Child Care Minister Dr. Douglas Mombeshora has said. He said that while the withdrawal of funding for these via USAID by the United States in January caught the government off guard, authorities quickly moved in to cover the gap.
“So we have enough stocks up to the end of June. But the stocks which were meant to cover the period from the end of June to the end of November have been halted. We cannot predict what will happen after the 90 days, but we expect to refuel the entire program,” he said.
The US will review the funding freeze after 90 days. “In terms of service delivery, for those on HIV, TB, and malaria treatment, there will be no disruption. No one should change the way they are taking their medicine,” Mombeshora said.
He said the government had already floated a tender to purchase more medical supplies that will cover the June-September period. “The challenges that remain are related to procurement. We had medicines for HIV, TB, and malaria that had been procured, but these came in phases,” he said.
“Now, what we have done as a government is to mobilize the necessary resources. And I think today, some of you may have seen in the papers that we have actually floated a tender for procurement of medicines. This will cover us from June to the end of September, depending on how other resources are managed,” Mombeshora added.
He explained that the funding gap caused by the major donor pullout was significant. “Let me start by saying the executive order from the President of the United States came as a surprise in January. We had workers at the primary healthcare level and our village healthcare workers, almost 19,000 of them, who were being paid by our partners. We also had over 8,000 nurses, some of whom were not in our opportunistic infection clinics. Most of these workers were involved in HIV, AIDS, TB, and malaria programs, so these are the programs that have been mainly affected by the executive order,” he said.
Dr. Mombeshora noted that the government moved quickly to address the situation. “This disruption only lasted a few days, and we stepped in to deploy our nurses to fill the gap. There were also a number of doctors and people working in laboratory services and administration. But we ensured that services were not disrupted by the absence of relief workers,” he said.
He also mentioned that a 90-day waiver from the USA provided temporary relief. “So the nurses who were involved in the treatment clinics were ordered to return to work, and they are back on duty. Doctors are also working in hospitals, not just doing administrative work, but actively treating patients,” Mombeshora said.
New Ziana
