Closing HIV day care centres brings protesters out

Thousands of people took to the streets of Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and the country's second city, Beira this week, to protest the government's closure of day care hospitals for HIV-positive patients.



In Maputo, activists handed Health Minister Paulo Ivo Garrido a memorandum slamming the decision, which they said was a setback in the national response to the epidemic. An estimated 16 percent of Mozambique's 21 million people are living with the virus.



In March 2008 the state decided to shut down the 23 day care centres for people living with the virus, run by government healthcare facilities across Mozambique, and has been integrating the patients into mainstream institutions, saying the exclusive nature of day centres was harming efforts to eradicate stigma and discrimination.



However, the organizers of the march warned that closing the day centres had led to many people interrupting their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and could even lead to deaths; HIV-patients were not getting proper care at the main hospitals to which they had been moved, and were sometimes even suffering discrimination.



An HIV-positive domestic worker, Ainda Macamo*, told IRIN/PlusNews she had skipped work to be at the march. "It was an opportunity to join all these people and to meet the minister ... We are dying and we cannot keep quiet."



César Mafanequiço, national coordinator of the Movement for Access to Treatment in Mozambique (MATRAM in Portuguese), said the government had closed the day care hospitals without consulting civil society or people living with HIV.



Accessing treatment has become even more difficult for those not yet on life-prolonging ARVs, while the quality of patient care had also been affected. "We are asking for the reversal of this situation," Mafanequiço said.



Garrido maintained that despite the shortcomings, "In just four years we have jumped from 6,000 to 140,000 people receiving antiretrovirals; it is ... [to be expected] that we will have problems."



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