Monday, June 11, 2018

There are plenty of Anti-viral drugs, says minister Ummy


Ummy Mwalimu 

The Minister for Health and Community Development, Gender, Children and Elderly Ummy Mwalimu has said that, the government is holding enough stock of the antiviral drugs for HIV/AIDS disease by 100 percent which are provided freely without any charges to patient already confirmed to have been infected by the scourge. The Minister’s call gives a sigh of relief to the infected patients in the country who are in doubt of the scarcity of these life prolonging drugs which are made available in every health centres in the country. 

The Minister made the assurance last week in parliament during questions and answer session when she was responding a supplementary question which was raised by a special seat legislator Catherine Magige (CCM) who wanted to know how does the government help those patient already confirmed HIV/AIDS disease sufferers in the country. In response, Minister Ummy noted that, the problems facing the disease sufferers when using these drugs is lack of proper diet which most users especially those coming from the poor families are unable to afford . According to the experts is recommended that, proper diet has to be consumed by users and that is why most of them especially those residing in rural areas dies quickly. She said that, the government is striving very hard to sensitize male youths into going for voluntary testing with a view to know their health status and in order to facilitate the move, the government is looking at other means of buying a special testing device for males which will test their sample of saliva to determine whether are infected or not. She further noted that, the testing device is very simple as it will be inserted inside somebody’s mouth and enable a person to test himself and give results after 15 minutes’ time.

No comments: