The National Aids Council (NAC), which has been under fire for holding onto funds collected through the Aids Levy while hundreds of people in need of life-prolonging drugs die prematurely, recently bought four CD4 count machines and gave them to Harare, Parirenyatwa, Mpilo and United Bulawayo central hospitals.
“Following the procurement of the machines, we sat down with stakeholders, including the hospitals and agreed that they should have made significant progress in clearing the backlog of all those people who want the CD4 count service,” Stanley Takaona, the vice-president of the Zimbabwe HIV and Aids Activists Union (Zhaau) said.
“The Bulawayo hospitals have done extremely well but Parirenyatwa has not made much progress in clearing the backlog and we wonder why because all the hospitals were supplied with everything they needed including the reagents they need for the blood tests.
“We want to understand what is happening because we had agreed that the backlog should be cleared within 30 days but six months later, not much has been done yet those are state-of-the- art machines which can take 400 blood samples a day compared to the old manual ones that processed 100 per week.”
Other speakers at a Zhaau event held in Epworth last week said some hospitals, like Harare Central, were charging user fees for CD4 count tests and US$5 for initiating a patient on anti-retroviral treatment despite a governmnet’s policy that the services should be for free.
NAC also supplied the four hospitals with anti-retroviral drugs procured with the Aids Levy proceeds.
“We call that double dipping because workers have already paid for it through the tax and someone wants more money,” Takaona said.
“We have also received reports that Chitungwiza Hospital is doing the same, charging people money they don’t have for a service that has been paid for, all in the name of user fees.”
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NAC chief executive Tapuwa Magure said his organisation had received the reports but was yet to do its own assessment to come up with an official position.
“What they usually say about the CD4 count tests is that our assistance does not cover costs for the tubes and gloves used in the process so they want to charge a nominal fee for those things,” Magure said.
“The statistics we have also show that the machines are not being used to optimum and we have to go on the ground and find out why this is happening because we are very concerned as this is against our goal of providing the service to all who need it.”
For one to be admitted on ARVs, they need to take a CD4 count test to determine whether their cell count requires them to be on the drugs or not. This is done after one tests positive for HIV.
