HIV/Aids treatment in Zambia

Zambia, in sub-Saharan Africa, is rated among the world’s highly indebted poor countries. According to the 2000 national census of population, the country has 10.3 million inhabitants. It is estimated that nearly eighty percent of the population live on less than a dollar per day.

According to official estimates of the Ministry of Health, 19.3 percent of Zambia’s total population are infected with HIV/Aids. There are large regional variations with Lusaka Province recording the highest infection rate at 33% and North Western Zambia the lowest at 11%. Women and children are the most vulnerable to both an infection with the virus and the effects of the pandemic: one out of four women attending antenatal clinics is HIV positive and 40 percent of the women aged 24 to 39 are infected. And yet, due to socio-economic and cultural factors, access to antiretroviral therapy/treatment (ART) is beyond reach for most of them. For children there are hardly any paediatric drugs.

Sub-Saharan Africa is undoubtedly the region worst affected by HIV/Aids. With its Three by Five Initiative, the World Health Organization (WHO) intends to give treatment to at least three million people in the developing world by the end of 2005. At the Zambian level, this translates into treating at least one hundred thousand people.

A joint statement issued on June 29, 2005 by the WHO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS) indicated that despite progress in providing ART the target was too ambitious. "The number of people receiving combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV/Aids in developing countries is increasing significantly - more than doubling from 400,000 in December 2003 to approximately one million in June 2005. However, access to HIV treatment continues to fall short of the growing need, and overall progress is unlikely to be fast enough to reach the target set by the WHO and UNAIDS of treating three million people by the end of 2005".