The United Nations Development Programme has resorted to airlifting 15 054 packs of anti-retroviral drugs in an effort to ease the drug shortages being experienced throughout the country.This is a desperate measure taken after Government came hard on the UN body for failure to make deliveries on agreed time frames, resulting in major stock outs throughout the country.
In an e-mail directed to Government officials and other stakeholders recently, UNDP's project co-ordinator Ms Iolanda Fortes said the first consignment of 5 294 packs of abacavir, which were planned for sea freight, will arrive in Harare on Monday (September 16) by air.
This consignment was scheduled to arrive sometime next month. Another consignment of 9 760 packs of abacavir, which was also earmarked for sea freight, is expected to arrive on September 23, again by air.
Ms Fortes earlier attributed the drug shortages to changes in treatment guidelines causing some regimens to be consumed more than the others. "The change in standard treatment guidelines has caused more tenofovir + lamivudine to be consumed.
"This has a domino effect because for second line regimen, more and more abacavir + didanosine will be required to replace the tenofovir + lamivudine that is now used as preferred first line," she wrote.
Ms Fortes said demand for abacavir has also increased as more and more patients are developing resistance to first line drugs.
