Southern Africa, the most affected by cuts in funds against AIDS

Johannesburg (Reuters)-them countries of el South of Africa, that face it worse of the pandemic of HIV / AIDS, will be probably them more affected in them next three years, since one of them greater donor of el world will reduce them funds that brings to combat the disease, said activists.

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The Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced last week the cut in funding for countries fighting against these diseases, after failing in the collection of at least $ 13 billion needed to finance their programmes.

The Fund said earlier this month which was reducing new grants for funding for the Nations to combat these ailments.

The global fund public-private partnership based in Geneva is the maximum funder of the fight against HIV and provides more than 70 percent of the funds for developing nations to obtain medications antiretrovirals (ARVS), who saves lives.

It is expected that the countries of southern Africa that rely heavily on the Global Fund – including Swaziland, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique – registered increases in deaths and infections as a result of the cuts in funding. The reservations of ARV also diminish.

“It is a disaster for Zimbabwe as a country,” said Faizel Tezera, head of doctors without borders in that country.

“More than 86,000 persons may remain untreated and some 5,000 children will be affected,” said Tezera to journalists.

Worldwide, some 33 million people living with HIV. Nearly two-thirds of that total inhabit Africa sub-Saharan.

The fight against AIDS activists indicate that the situation in Swaziland, where about 26 percent of the population of 1.2 million people living with HIV, was serious before the fall in reserves of ARV.

Representatives of doctors without borders and the South African Group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) warn of an impending disaster.

“The quality of treatment will be strongly committed”, she said Safari Mbewe, spokesman for the network of people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi

Malawi, where about 10 percent of the population or 960.000 people living with the disease that attacks the immune system, had hopes for new scholarships for the next year to deal with the estimated 70,000 new infections.

“It is catastrophic for our Nations, particularly for women and children,” said TAC spokesman Nokhwezi Haboyi.

Some South African State facilities are struggling with shortages of drugs ARVS, even though 80 percent of the funds to combat HIV/AIDS coming from the Government.

Patients in hospice funded by donors recently were referred to of health public facilities because many shut down for the loss of funding.

(Mmathabo Tladi report); (Edited by Ana Laura Mitidieri in Spanish)