Close to 150,000 Zimbabweans have died from AIDS this year, President Robert Mugabe said Wednesday on the eve of World AIDS Day. "The pandemic has claimed 146,331 lives so far this year," Mugabe said in a speech broadcast live on state radio and also carried by Deutsche Presse Agentur. But he said the care and treatment of people living with the virus has been "severely compromised by the ever-increasing cost of anti-retrovirals." Zimbabwean companies have been manufacturing anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), but an acute shortage of foreign currency to import ingredients has undermined their capacity. Recent figures show that one in five of Zimbabwe's 12 million people are HIV positive, but only 24,000 are currently on the life- prolonging drugs. The pandemic, one of the highest in southern Africa was putting pressure on the country's tightly-stretched health delivery system, the Zimbabwean president said. "Estimates point to over 70 per cent of hospital beds occupied by people with AIDS-related ailments," said Mugabe. --SP 2147 Local Time 1847 GMT
