adminprogrammes funded by the organisation.
Speaking at a media briefing in Harare yesterday, Global Fund’s media officer Ms Marcela Rojo said Zimbabwe was among the 20 countries her organisation is focusing on.
She said the countries working with the fund were receiving huge amounts of money for various projects.
“Our goal is to ensure that no patient is left without treatment through new initiations and continuation of services,” Ms Rojo said.
Ms Rojo, who is based in Geneva, is in the country for a week to conduct and facilitate media tours for both local and international journalists.
“The purpose of these tours is for journalists to assess Global Fund projects and get first-hand information on what has been done with Global Fund’s money,” she said.
Speaking at the same occasion, Zimbabwe’s Country Co-ordinating Mechanism (CMM) co-ordinator Mr Rangarirai Chiteure said the Global Fund has so far released US$236 million to combat the three diseases and strengthening of health systems.
He said the bulk of funding for HIV and Aids programmes was for procurement of ARVs.
All these programmes will run until 2014.
“Thereafter, Zimbabwe will definitely apply for further funding, but we still have to decide what to apply for in the next round of funding,” Mr Chiteure said.
He said Zimbabwe still has funding for a further two-year period, which it still has to apply for from the Global Fund and that money is likely to take the country’s programmes from 2014 to 2016.
After the briefing, journalists toured the Opportunistic Infections (OI) Clinic at Chitungwiza Central Hospital and tuberculosis programme at Wilkins Infectious Disease Hospital.
At Chitungwiza’s OI clinic, journalists were told that about 14 000 people including 500 children are on ARVs.
But officials said staff shortage, lack of operational space and manual capturing of patients’ records stalled efficiency at the institution, resulting in congestion.
“Our operational space is becoming too small for us considering the number of patients we receive a day,” said OI clinic Sister-in-Charge Siduduzo Manamike.
“We assist close to 800 patients daily, about 50 of whom are new patients, yet we only have three doctors and 12 nurses.”
TB experts at Wilkins Hospital called for extensive training of staff to manage Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and decentralisation of laboratories to effectively combat the new strain of TB, which is resistant to current TB treatments.
MDR-TB is more complicated, costly and takes about two years to treat.
In Zimbabwe, about 80 cases of MDR-TB have so far been confirmed.
Online Reporter