Zimbabwe has enough ARVs: Madzorera

adequate resources to maintain those on the ARV medication. The Minister said this during a question and answer session.
Mutasa North MP Mr David Chimhini (MDC-T) had asked the Minister to update the House on the ARV status.

“Drug stocks are very dynamic, they change every day but we have enough stocks. I would like to confirm for this year and for the next year and up to 2015. By that, I mean we have enough money and enough stocks to manage everybody on anti-retrovirals at the moment,” he said.

Minister Madzorera said they had stocks for tenofovir/lamivudine and nevirapine regimen to last for seven months.
“For the stavudine/lamivudine/nevarapine regimen, we have 26 months of stock. For the paediatric ARVs, we have 11 months of stock at hand,” he said.

One challenge they were facing, he said, was to dispose them in time before their expiry.
“So, we are currently finding ways of disposing some of our anti-retroviral stocks for paediatric patients because we actually know that we will not finish these stocks before they expire. So, what we do in such instances is to collaborate with neighbouring countries who want these stocks and we give them or exchange as we have always done.”

Zimbabwe, said Minister Madzorera, would continue giving patients stavudine regimen but should they react they would change them to tenofovir.
“We are not going to suddenly wake up with everybody on tenofovir but we will change anybody who reacts to stavudine or who develops other chronic side effects.”

Responding to another question, Minister Madzorera said Government was able to absorb all nurses should Treasury lift job freeze.
“The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare is very well able to absorb all the nurses on the market and all the nurses who are going to train over the next two years or so. Our constraint is not vacancies within the hospitals and clinics, but our constraint is the employment freeze from Treasury.

“If Treasury today says, employ another 5 000 nurses, we have got places for them within our institutions because there are people who died, who retired and so forth,” he said.
On cancer treatment, Minister Madzorera said Zimbabwe was still a long way to offer free treatment for the disease.