Zimbabwe MPs take public Aids tests

Zimbabwe MPs take public Aids tests

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By Staff Reporter/AFP

A DOZEN Zimbabwean lawmakers will take voluntary HIV tests this week in a bid to remove the stigma attached to Aids, the parliamentarians said.

The parliamentarians from both the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will be tested on Friday.

"The counselling and testing the MPs will undergo are in line with the legislators’ desire to break the stigma associated with HIV," the MPs said in a statement.

The move, they said, was aimed at "raising both debate and awareness on issues surrounding HIV/Aids."
Tendayi Westerhof, director of an Aids lobby group, hailed them as role models.

"This is a historic event. The 12 MPs are sending out a clear message about their commitment to fight HIV/Aids," the chief of the Public Personalities Against Aids Trust said. "Their action on the 7th of May will establish them firmly as role models for all Zimbabweans and indeed for all parliamentarians in Zimbabwe as well as in other countries affected by HIV."

It will be up to individual legislators, who are members of a parliamentary committee on health and child welfare, to make their results public.

With about 24.9% of its adult population infected with HIV or Aids, the southern African country has one of the world's highest prevalence rates in the world.

An average of more than 3,000 Aids deaths occur each week in Zimbabwe.

Last year local media reported that morgues were failing to cope with the numbers, and that government mortuaries were turning away bodies as they were exceeding their intake capacity by more than threefold.

Around 70% of patients admitted to Zimbabwe's hospitals suffer from HIV and Aids-related illnesses while 33% of pregnant women in the country are infected with HIV, according to health experts - AFP
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