Zimbabwe's National AIDS Council ( NAC) has drafted a new strategic plan to guide for operations against HIV and AIDS for the next four years, an official said on Sunday.

NAC evaluation and monitoring manager Amon Mpofu said the plan against HIV and AIDS would be launched soon. He said the new plan will make the council's programs and activities more responsive to new challenges such as increased demand for Anti-Retroviral (ARV) Drugs and supplementary feeding.

NAC's thrust, which in the past was inclined towards prevention of HIV and AIDS, now needed to also encompass increased interventions on treatment, he added.

Mpofu said there were 600,000 people infected with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe requiring treatment, and half of them require ARVs.

He said the shortage of foreign currency was affecting their ARV roll out program, adding they were only able to cater for 32, 000 people instead of 60,000 at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, Mpofu announced that an accumulated total of 422 million Zimbabwe dollars (about 1.7 million U.S. dollars) had been realized from the AIDS levy since the inception of NAC in 1999 to date. The funds, he said, were used to finance HIV and AIDS interventions in the country.

Zimbabwe was the first country in southern Africa to come up with an AIDS levy and also the first in the region to record a decline in HIV and AIDS prevalence rate.

HIV and AIDS prevalence rate for the country first declined from 24.1 percent to 20.1 percent in 2003 and has further declined to 18.1 percent in 2006, according to the latest Zimbabwe demographic and health survey report. Mpofu attributed the decline to sexual behavior change among Zimbabweans.

Nearly 3,000 people die of HIV/AIDS related illnesses in Zimbabwe every week.

Source: Xinhua