Zimbabwean Children Die as ARVs Expire
25 February 2015
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According to government records 187,000 children are living with HIV-AIDS and are in dire need of Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART). But thousands are dying while the drugs expire in store-rooms. Only 46% of these children are on ART, while many die of AIDS before being diagnosed.

Dr Owen Mugurungi, head of TB and AIDS unit in the Health Ministry
Dr Owen Mugurungi, head of TB and AIDS unit in the Health Ministry

Miriam Nyamutamba (not her real name) of Wedza is a mother of two who are both HIV positive. Her last born, who is now five, was diagnosed with HIV two years ago after he had struggled with ill health.
“My child had some continuous coughing and this used to worry me a lot. I visited a number of clinics and the cough could not be cured. It was only after I had visited my sister in Harare that she told me I should ask doctors to test the child for HIV,” she said.
“I returned to Wedza and visited Marondera hospital for the process. But it took me almost six months to get him fully tested. At one point we went to the hospital and were told that the results were mixed up and they ordered her to undergo another test. The process was so tedious I almost gave up,” she said.
Delayed testing.
The Secretary General of the Zimbabwe HIV and AIDS Activist Union Community Trust, Rosa Chimbindi, said community monitoring programmes by the trust showed that drugs were expiring in hospital stores due to delayed testing of children for HIV.
“These reports continue coming to us that ARVs for children are expiring in local hospitals, and they make sense given the time it takes for the results to come out. It is taking more than four months for results to come out and this is caused mainly by the centralisation of areas where children get tested for HIV.
“For example people in the remote areas like Murewa have to go to their district hospital for testing and the results may take long. We have reports from a number of parents who got frustrated and never returned to the hospital to collect their results because of these delays,” she said.
“We call upon government to decentralise the process. They should even put mobile clinics to test children the same way they do with adults because the most affected are those who live in the rural areas where they cannot afford to travel to hospitals.”
Diagnostic challenges
Dr Owen Mugurungi, head of TB and AIDS unit in the Health Ministry, acknowledged that drugs were expiring in hospital because of the challenges in administering ART on children.
“Previously we were unable to detect whether a child was infected or not until they were 18 months. So treatment was for children from two years to 14 years and those under two years were not put on treatment because we did not have the diagnostic methods,” he explained. Mugurungi said 30% of children born with HIV would die before reaching the age of two and before being tested.
“The second issue was the paediatric formulation. When the pharmaceutical industry started making HIV medicines they were for adults. When we started putting children on ARVs we used to crush the pill which was for adults and give it to the children. The other issue was of the capacity which has not been there. Children when you look at the practice of medicine are slightly more difficult to manage than adults. There was no capacity or enthusiasm to treat children,” he said.
But National AIDS Council Chief executive Tapuwa Magure is optimistic that the number of children on ARV will increase this year owing to the relaxed HIV guidelines. “With the total AIDS levy we collected for 2014 ($38 million) coupled with the new HIV guidelines it is going to be simple for us to increase the number of children on ART because there is no more testing for children’s CD4 count. Once they are diagnosed with HIV they are put on treatment there and then,” he said. – The Zimbabwean