HEALTH MANAGEMENT. Cash crunch hits Swaziland AIDS patients: MSF

JOHANNESBURG | September 9, 2011 1: 08 pm EDT
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - an acute Government funding crisis in Swaziland, last absolute monarchy of Africa, interruption of the supply of HIV/AIDS drugs and impede the fight against the virus in the country with the world's highest infection rate, said Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) Friday.
Stocks of test kits and related chemicals were "almost dry," it carries on - to the impossible, with the progress of 70,000 patients to the treatment and more than 130,000 people, the virus chart, said the aid organization.
"We run after the epidemic." Aymeric Peguillan, MSF country head, we don't the epidemic manage, ", said Reuters in the neighbouring South Africa.
Swaziland is one of 26 percent of the adult population, or more than 200,000 people it infected with the strongest country affected by AIDS.
King Mswati III resolved to pay, but as the full extent of the budget crisis in March for the patients to treatment are clear-appointed Government, that commitment glides and is the supply of anti-AIDS drugs is disturbed, Peguillan said.
"There is no real protection." There is no money aside and guaranteed only used for deliveries of drugs, "he said."
The deteriorating health, which also lack of tuberculosis drugs, is likely to fuel public anger on Mswati, has at least a dozen women and a personal fortune estimated at $200 million.
Demanding political reforms have staged this week a number of brands trade unions and pro-democracy groups and Wednesday, several demonstrators were arrested and beaten, as the police with tear gas and batons crowds to disperse.
The Government has Bail-Out to South Africa for an emergency, attempts have and inserted to secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Pretoria agreed to borrow $340 million in August, but the agreement came amid indications that Mswati and his inner circle South African demands for political and economic reforms are an objection to a halt.
The financial crisis stems from a recession 2009 in South Africa, a sharp drop in regional Customs Union revenues, the two-thirds of the Swazi Government revenues historically have taken into account.
The budget deficit has exploded 14 per cent of GDP to a Greece scale, but the Government fell to the reduction of public expenditure on the Royal household, military and other areas officially what Africa is of the most bloated civil service.
(Reporting by Ed Cropley;) (Editing by Jon hemming)

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