Harare, 14 April 2010-(The Herald)-ZIMBABWE has continued to demonstrate commitment and leadership on national response to HIV and AIDS, a report on the country’s progress towards meeting global targets says.

The report compiled by the National AIDS Council and UNAids on the United Nations General Assembly Special Session Declaration of Commitment of 2001 — said Zimbabwe managed to evaluate 17 of the 25 global indicators.

In areas of HIV programming and regulation, Zimbabwe is also making positive strides.

These include reducing HIV prevalence to at least 10 percent in line with the Millennium Development Goals — civil society participation, providing counselling and testing services to the uniformed forces and screening all donated blood for HIV among other successes.

The current HIV prevalence rate stands at 14,3 percent.

However, there is still a huge gap in the provision of free anti-retroviral drugs with 56,1 percent of HIV positive people in urgent need of them (including children) accessing them.

Over 300 000 people are in need of ARVs.

The report also noted with concern that 30 percent of infants born to HIV positive mothers were being infected.

"Heterosexual contact is the principal mode of HIV transmission in Zimbabwe.

"The second most important mode of HIV transmission is peri-natal and occurs when the mother passes HIV to the child during pregnancy, at birth or during breastfeeding," the report said.

Major challenges cited as hindering HIV and AIDS programming were dwindled funding, an unfavourable economic environment, inadequate human resources and a weakened health system.

"Consequently, the economic challenges encountered in the period 2000-2008 led to poverty, unemployment and international migration among the general population to levels that were unprecedented.

"Most women then engaged in cross border trading exposing themselves to sexual and other forms of abuse during the course of their work," reads the report.

The report compilers called for domestic and international resource mobilisation to cover funding gaps.

"Generally, development partners will improve the possibility of attaining UNGASS targets by covering financial gaps, channelling resources in a streamlined way and implementing co-ordinated activities at site level through collaboration with the Government of Zimbabwe."

Zimbabwe is one of 189 countries that have committed themselves to a comprehensive programme of national commitment and action to fight HIV and AIDS by adopting the UNGass declaration.

This is the fourth report that Zimbabwe has submitted to UNGASS since 2001.