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.
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