A recent article in the Toronto Globe and Mail detailed how astronomical inflation rates and the lack of foreign currency in Zimbabwe are undermining the delivery of and adherence to anti-retroviral therapy among HIV/AIDS patients. This includes not only the inability to expand treatment services to the 320,000 Zimbabweans in desperate need of them, but also denying individuals already on treatment consistent drug supplies therefore opening the door to the spread of drug-resistant strains that could jeopardize future HIV/AIDS treatment programs in that country and in the region.The article also points out another major challenge introduced by donor funding for HIV/AIDS:
The 15,000 people receiving drugs through the public sector program in Zimbabwe are only a third as many people as in the country’s much poorer neighbors. Sanctions against the Mugabe regime mean that Zimbabwe received only an estimated $8 USD per person with HIV compared to $184 USD in Zambia next door.
Although inequality in foreign assistance between recipient countries is certainly not new, such disproportionate distribution in the face of a crisis seems at best short-sighted and at worst dangerous. Drug-resistant HIV is not only costly to treat, it threatens to undermine fledgling ARV treatment programs in countries throughout the region—programs that currently receive hundreds of millions of donor dollars every year. We can rest assured that drug-resistant HIV will not respect political borders, would it not be better for the global community as a whole to find ways to fight the pandemic in the same way?
