Cash injection for shaky ARV plan

Zimbabwe has allocated Zim $30 billion (US $1.9 million) to rolling out antiretroviral (ARV) therapy at public health facilities, the National AIDS Council (NAC) has said. However, NAC executive director Dr Tapuwa Magure said stocks of locally produced ARVs were running low due to a shortage of foreign currency to import the raw materials for manufacturing the medication. He told the official daily newspaper, The Herald, "This money is actually useless, because when we talk about ARVs, we will be talking about forex - what is needed is foreign currency." Dr Edwin Muguti, Zimbabwe's Deputy Minister of Health and Child Welfare, recently announced that the government was engaging the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe with a view to obtaining priority for the pharmaceutical industry when allocating foreign currency.