ARV supplies set to improve

Richard Sadumba said there were “stock imbalances” of drugs for adults from June.
“Procurements have already been carried out and some of the shipments have already started coming in,” he said.
“They will continue coming in until early next year.”
Although paediatric formulations of both ARVs and cotrimoxazole were in full supply, Mr Sadumba said adult cotrimoxazole was in short supply because it was an antibiotic used for general purposes.
The supply of cotrimoxazole, Mr Sadumba said, was expected to improve as Government was set to receive nearly 34 000 units of the drug this week.
An additional 27 000 units would arrive within a month and another      77 000 units before end of the year.
These deliveries were expected to ease cotrimoxazole shortages at public institutions.
Mr Sadumba said the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria agreed to fund six-month supplies of ARVs as buffer stock to ensure that a similar scenario would not be repeated.
The money from the Global Fund is an advance for 2014. 
Aids and TB Unit director Dr Owen Mugurungi said Government would continue to mobilise resources to close the gap in 2014.
Dr Mugurungi said at national level, drugs available were enough to give people supplies to last them one month instead of two weeks.
People living with HIV and Aids recently demonstrated at thw National Aids Council offices claiming that they were being given drugs only enough for one or two weeks.
“We are in the process of de-centralising distribution of ARVs and what could be happening is that people transferred from central institutions to clinics are not taking their referral letters immediately,” said Dr Mugurungi. “Rather they wait until their medication is finished and present themselves to a clinic for collection when the health provider has not budgeted for them.”
He said people should be given a month’s supply until the situation normalised.