Endless lines face AIDs patients in Zimbabwe Government unable to provide drugs and care to tens of thousands in need

HIV drugs at the government infirmary here. When Alexander became sick three months ago, the couple decided to get tested; both were HIV-positive. So they went to Mpilo Hospital. After five hours in the line for antiretroviral drugs, they were told the hospital wasn't registering any new HIV-positive patients.

I indeed cried," Perpetual, 47, said. I was not feeling well. They just tell you to move back tomorrow. You come back tomorrow and there's another long train again." You end up giving up," Alexander said as a rat scuttled across the floor of the couple's small house.

You end up affluent home." Zimbabwe's financial crisis has seen the near collapse of its condition system. Bash by foreign currency dearth and hyperinflation, the government stopped fascinating contemporary Support patients in October 2006.

Many people die of AIDS complications without ever getting antiretroviral medicine. In Zimbabwe, 321,000 people need antiretroviral medicines, or ARVs, according to the Creation Health Organization, and by oneself 91,000 have access to them. An April report by WHO and two other U.N. 6 percent of children in need of treatment were getting it.

The government affirm more than 2,200 Zimbabweans die every week of AIDS complications. Zimbabwe's delivering of ARVs is below average for low- and middle-income countries, according to the agencies' report. In sub-Saharan Africa, an average 28 percent of the community in need of the drugs inspire them. In Zimbabwe, the percentage was approximately 24 percent.

As access to government treatment has become hopeless for most, the private market is gone of reach too.

A Dec report by International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, an international advocacy group, said the amount of confidential HIV AIDS patients dropped from 10,000 in July to 6,000 because government policies and inflation had caused the cost of treatment to soar.

Ahmed Leher, 52, cannot transport to call his illness next to its name. To him it's "this thing" or "this rubbish." His avoirdupois has dropped 50 hammer in a few months.

He feels angry knowing that there's a medicine outside there that could save him, yet the hospital method won't confer it to him. I don't want to die young," he said, his face anguished.

I know there's yet life. I know that with ARVs I can conscious for years. I've seen my partner die. I've watched the position they force through. This thing can just intertwine overnight.

I'll be in hospital. Tonight this thing can just transform me and when you look at me again, I'll be a skeleton." With no access to government or undisclosed medicines, people ofttimes turn to herbal remedies and traditional healers.

Alexander Mudewe spent a dollar on five tablets from a quack on the street that were assumed to cure AIDS. They said I'd bend better. I bought a couple. When you are desperate, you just buy anything."

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From http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3ff%3d/c/a/2008/01/01/~.dtl