The MDC joins the rest of the world in commemorating the International Aids Day.
Sadly for Zimbabwe, the day comes when the country is facing a critical health crisis that has been brought about by poor health management policies of Zanu PF which include lack of clean water,
shortages of critical drugs and work stoppages by health personnel due to low salaries and poor working conditions.

The MDC laments the total collapse of the entire health sector in the country. As we commemorate this day, nurses and doctors are on strike while those infected with HIV/Aids have no easy access to anti-retrovirals.

Thousands of health professionals have fled the country also due to low salaries, lack of drugs, medical equipment and poor working conditions.

All the Opportunistic Infectious Clinics (OICs) in the country are not functional due to the strike, leaving millions of Zimbabweans at serious risk of contracting infectious diseases.

The MDC would like to thank and salute the few nurses and doctors still coming to work for the hard work they are doing for no pay.

The MDC is however, in solidarity with the workers who are not coming to work as they cannot afford bus fares and money for their families’ upkeep.
But as we celebrate the International Aids Day, the MDC would like to urge all Zimbabweans to exercise restraint and have safe sexual behavior.

We urge Zimbabweans to remain faithful in their marriages while teenagers and school-going children should not allow the endemic poverty in the country to drive them into taking risky choices that
will expose them to HIV/Aids.

The MDC recognizes the Aids pandemic as a health crisis with social, developmental and economic implications. HIV/Aids has an unprecedented impact on national development through the decimation of those in the sexually and economically active age group.

The pandemic is leaving a trail of fractured and impoverished families, hundreds of thousands of orphans and the destruction of entire communities.

The MDC government will equip the public and private health sector that produce risk, and to satisfactorily treat and care for the people infected and affected by HIV.

In particular, the MDC will tackle the related issues of poverty, malnutrition, gender exploitation and inequality, overcrowding, insecurity, illiteracy, and adverse cultural and traditional norms that foster the growth of the pandemic in Zimbabwe today.