Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
THE National AIDS Council (NAC) has assured citizens of an uninterrupted supply of antiretroviral (ARV) medicines, despite funding cuts from international donors.
NAC’s Chief Executive Officer Dr Bernard Madzima says the country’s stockpiles of antiretroviral medicines and laboratory supplies are currently sufficient, with a three-month reserve in place.
“The current levels for the antiretroviral medicines and laboratory commodities in Zimbabwe are adequate. We normally keep stocks for up to three months and since the executive order by the United States government came into effect, our stocks were still adequate and we still have up to the end of June.
“However, since the executive order was passed, we have made arrangements to make sure that we don’t have a gap post-end of June, so basically, we have resource mobilised using domestic resources especially our AIDS levy to make sure that the supply chain management is not disrupted as we wait for the effects of the 90-day stop order by the U.S government.
“The funding cuts by PEPFA and USAID leaves a big gap in the funding for the HIV programme as PEPFA usually gives close to 40 million in terms of ARVs and also support to human resources for health workers, mainly community health workers and several civic society organisations which work in that space. So the effects of the cuts are huge, but we have to make sure that the programme is not disrupted,”
To mitigate the impact of funding cuts, government is mobilising domestic resources.
“As the Honourable Minister of Health and Childcare, Dr Mombeshora, said in Parliament, we are looking at funding sources from Treasury, from AIDS levy, to make sure that there is no gap.
“At the moment, we are aware that there is the health levy, the airtime tax, and the sin tax, which is collected by the Treasury, and we want to ensure that it covers the gaps. We don’t want to have a situation where some clients or some of our people are affected in terms of access to medication.
“So we ensure that every corner of Zimbabwe, every hospital, every health facility is offering these medicines. There will be no disruption of the supply chain for ARVs and laboratory commodities. As part of the health financing strategy, we as a country need to look at domestic resource mobilisation to make sure that we have a sustainable ARV and HIV and health in general programme,” Dr Madzima said.
Government’s health financing strategy aims to enhance access to quality healthcare for all citizens by boosting domestic funding through initiatives such as the sin tax, and a National Health Insurance Scheme.
The ultimate goal is to achieve Universal Health Coverage as outlined in the “National Health Strategy 2021-2025”, which prioritises increasing budget allocations to the health sector and securing additional funding.
