African News Agency : Welcome

New York, 3 Oct - (ANA) - Zimbabwe is set to attain “universal” coverage for AIDS treatment following an $84 million disbursement yesterday by the United Nations-backed Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The amount will cover costs for life-saving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to treat 10,000 new patients, the Global Fund has announced. The funds will also finance a six-month ARV buffer stock to guard against treatment interruptions for some 480,000 patients in Zimbabwe. Close to half a billion dollars will be distributed around the world as part of UN-supported efforts to respond to the global threat posed by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The additional funds slated for the African country will aid the financing of treatment for 203,440 patients in Zimbabwe by the end of the year. The Global Fund, a public-private partnership and international financing institution, was created in 2002 to scale up resources to fight three of the world’s most devastating diseases, and to direct those resources to areas of greatest need. Zimbabwe’s two other main sponsors of teatment, the Zimbabwean Government and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), respectively provide support to a further 124,000 patients and 35,900 patients. (ANA)