Currently, Zimbabwe is one of the most HIV-affected countries of the world,
presenting an average prevalence of about 13-15% of the population living with
the virus. The Zimbabwe government has implemented a framework focused
on HIV between 2012 and 2015. The program has been completed and data
are currently still being collected. Improvements have been made but the
pandemic is far from being beaten.
This work is focused on the challenges encountered while determining improvement
in health status, retention and factors associated with attrition among
HIV-infected patients within the latest HIV programs. According to these
challenges, possible solutions based on literature are proposed. Moreover, the
data collected from national and international reports have been used in a
stochastic model to complement the comparative analysis of policies. An initial
estimate of costs and effects is reported.
The stochastic model defined an horizon of equilibrium for the pandemic in
more than 40 years, unless large investments are made and policies on prevention
are extended. While the current success in terms of decentralization
of life-saving treatments is acknowledged, there is still a need to improve and
decentralize testing and monitoring of patients. Confidently, the costs associated
to anti-retroviral therapies will continue to drop, but in this context it
is relevant to identify the emergence of medication toxicities or failure, to act
a change from first to second line therapy promptly. All these observations
lead to the general suggestions of increasing the domestic financing in the fight
against HIV, and of improving the rural HIV-testing