Stringent economic instability impact on youths living and affected with HIV
The current economic instability
notably through the rise the prices of basic commodities, transport and
medicine has a regrettable and dangerous impact on young people living with
HIV. Although the government through its current economic polices argues we
have to suffer now to enjoy later. I believe for those living with HIV it is
now a matter of acquiring AIDS and regrettably to death. The government policy
that one bond is equal to the US dollar needs us to remind the government that
it is a lie.
Mr Ncube should understand that,
the policy has affected the accessibility and availability of fuel. The government
said it had allocated US$70 million for fuel, which however did not quench the
demand. The government even provided US$20 million more but the fuel situation
still has not changed. This has negatively impacted he cost of acquiring health
services. The transport cost have doubled and is now limited as many of the
transport providers are failing to get fuel regularly. My question is Mr Ncube,
Are you aware of a term called Adherence. Many will be forced to default by the
situation at hand. I would want to believe the concept by BHASO called CAGS
will be handy in ART collection but what will happen when there is no transport
at all. The reality is that, many will not be able to go to their health
centres to collect ART and forcing them to default. Defaulting slowly develop
medicine resistance. We do not want HIV that is resistant to the regimen the
nation can afford.
Zimbabwe seeks to have a healthy
nation. This means we need to have quality food that meet good nutrition. The
soaring prices of food due to factors drawing from your policy is a shoot to the
investment that have been successful against HIV. Food prices are rising, yet
our sources of income are dwindling. The majority of youths are vendors and
have not been formally employed. You arrogantly through the guise of cholera
send away vendors across the whole country even in areas where they were no
cases of Cholera. Rather than increase AIDS Levy you put a funny 2% tax on our transactions.
For what?
We are in a multi-currency
economy, pharmacies now want US$, Rands or euro and anything else other than
the bond notes. Imagine you are HIV positive and you want to take stomach ache
medicine. The pharmacy is not taking bond notes. We have limited access to US$ and we only
have bonds and RTGS or Ecocash. In simple words, you are putting the lives of people
living with HIV at risk of opportunistic infections which they will not be able
to fight.
It is a record known that private
pharmacies provide SRH services for youths compared to Council clinics,
government hospitals. These places want US$, youth need, morning after pills,
family planning pills. Thus we are going to have more illegal abortions,
unprotected sex leading to unwanted and unplanned pregnancies and srh problems
emanating from this policy.
The afore mentioned issues have
been the major cause of AIDS related deaths in the 2007 to 2008 period. This was
mainly due to access to ART related to the distance to the health centre,
access to nutritional food was a challenge, remember the 1 - 1 - 0 or 1 - 0 - 0 eating
habits adopted just to have a meal a day and the inability to deal with
Opportunistic Infections as access to medicine was limited. Zimbabwe is a
country with limited research capabilities in health and lives will be lost
because of ignorant policies based on the acumen that we need to suffer to
conquer. Why suffer when we were never
consulted. Are you suffering? You cannot make sacrifices over other people`s
lives without their consent. That is purely ignorance and bad governance in
practice.
Written by: Tinashe Chirape
Real Agenda For Youth
Transformation
0719293194
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