I hear the Minister of Health, Henry Madzorera has plans to launch a door to door HIV testing country wide. Surely that is a disaster in the making because what then if everyone is tested? Yes it is good for people to know their HIV status but what will happen to those found to be positive?
The country at the moment cannot afford to provide medication to everyone who has been tested so far, a number of HIV+ people are still on the waiting list to get medication. In a situation like this how then can door to door testing be a good thing when all it will bring is suffering upon innocent people. An estimated 425 497 people are currently on ART (Anti Retro- Viral Therapy) out of the 547 000 people requiring ART, clearly as it is, the burden is too much and the government cannot afford to cater for everyone who needs treatment. Why then would we want to increase the burden and put the lives of many in danger by forcing them to get tested and fail to provide treatment for them? Ladies and gentlemen think about it. Is it not proper to first increase the funding for health and make sure there is adequate money for everyone to access treatment if found to be HIV+?
With the possible cancellation of the Global Fund round 11, there is need for the government and other local potential donors to start looking in their bags and see what they can come up with to increase health-care funding. It is sad these measures are going to be taken now when they were supposed to have been done a long time ago. The government must start fulfilling the Abuja declaration requirements where a government is supposed to allocate at least 15% of the national budget to health.
Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Abuja declaration and so should honor its promise and increase health-care funding so that the Global fund can just provide additional resources like it is supposed to do and not have a country rely mostly on Global fund. Looking at Zimbabwe, can we say that it does not have enough natural resources that can be tapped and the money used to increase health-care funding? No, Zimbabwe do have vast minerals that it can utilize and on top so many local potential donors that can help too, look for instance at how much Mbada Diomonds is investing in soccer, can’t we get more people like that to invest in a worthy cause like health-care financing? We can, if we can all put our heads together and really see how much people are suffering health wise in our country.
Door to door HIV testing will be a disaster if done now when there is no enough treatment for those found to be HIV+ and in urgent need of treatment, but it will be a good thing if done when health-care funding has been increased and there are enough resources to provide adequate medication to those in need.
