Malawi says 91 000 people are on new ARVs

Malawi Government says it has so far managed to put at least 91 000 people on new antiretroviral treatment (ART) out of the more than 400 000 people currently on the ART.

However, Ministry of Health officials during a press conference yesterday said Malawi is set to finalise the process of rolling out the new ART to all those who require them by the end of the year or sooner than.

The officials argued that out of the remaining people not all of them require the new drug.

ART programme officer in the Ministry Eustice Mhango said out of the 400 000 people currently on the ARTs some were on different regimes, meaning that not all them will be moved to the new regime.

“There are some people who would want to maintain the old ARTs due to different reasons,” she said.

Initially, government had a deadline of July 2013, to have a complete roll out of the new drug, but due to a number of challenges the deadline was missed amid fears that Malawi was not yet ready to move the whole population to the new drug.

The new drug known as 5A is said to be better and have minimal side effects than the old drug which is known as 1A.

The new regime costs almost five times as much as the current one. Government now spends about 34 million dollars (K11.9 billion) annually on ARVs and it is estimated that the new regime will cost up to 105 million dollars (K36.75 billion) a year.

According to Mhango, government is currently scaling up the roll out and is expected that from June this year almost 20 000 people are being put of the new drug every quarter.

However, both Mhango and Secretary for Health Paul Chiunguzeni could not say how much government is spending to meet the cost of the new drug and how many people in total will be on the new drug after the roll out.