HARARE - Zimbabweans battling the world's fourth highest AIDS rate are getting little help from international donors while a clampdown on non-governmental organisations is threatening to take away the little assistance they do have.
Relations between President Robert Mugabe's government and non-governmental organisations in the southern African country hit rock-bottom after a controversial bill was adopted late last year, compelling NGOs to submit to government scrutiny.
"We have millions of vulnerable people out there...both infected and affected crying out for help," says Prisca Munonyara, director of the Zimbabwean NGO AIDS Counselling Trust (ACT), set up 17 years ago to provide free counselling to the poor living with HIV and AIDS.
"They have come to depend on the NGOs for help and they are the people who suffer most as a result of the current state of affairs," says Munonyara, referring to the bill that has yet to be signed into law by Mugabe.
"There is an uncertainty in the NGO sector since the NGO bill. We have all been sitting on the fence and our funding partners overseas have adopted a similar stance," she says.
As Zimbabwe heads into key parliamentary elections on Thursday, the AIDS crisis is getting little attention here as the parties slug it out with attacks on each other and - in Mugabe's case - on British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai promised at a weekend rally to ensure that hospitals are able to treat people living with HIV and AIDS adding: "The youth especially must be careful and use condoms -- three, three -- if necessary, to stop the spread of AIDS."
Zimbabwe has the world's fourth highest AIDS rate, affecting one in four adults, trailing just behind Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho, according to UN AIDS.
But contrary to neighboring southern African countries, Zimbabwe is not attracting foreign aid on the same scale, mostly due to concerns from big western donors over the government's record on corruption and human rights.
According to the UN children's agency UNICEF, the average annual per capita donor spending on a person suffering from AIDS in southern Africa by the US government, the World Bank and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is 74 dollars (55 euros).
But in Zimbabwe only four dollars is spent on average on a person living with HIV, the agency says.
Zambia, which has a lower AIDS rate than Zimbabwe, gets 187 dollars per HIV-infected person, UNICEF says.
Zimbabwe's Labour Minister Paul Mangwana said the bill was necessary to rein in NGOs that the government claims were being used by foreign governments and organisations as conduits to channel funds to the opposition.
If passed into law the bill will require NGOs to submit themselves to government scrutiny, present regular reports of their accounts and projects, and bar NGOs involved in governance issues from receiving foreign funding.
Jonah Mudehwe, director of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), the umbrella body of all NGOs, said the poor are suffering as international aid agencies have adopted a "wait and see" stance since the passing of the bill.
"Since the promulgation of the NGO bill the situation has been uncertain and unsettling," Mudehwe said.
"The poor communities that were benefiting from the services of NGOs do not get as much as they did," said Mudehwe.
The Zimbabwean government two weeks ago said it was investigating several NGOs it accused of abusing funds received from international donors in what critics said was an attempt to build a case against NGOs.
Mangwana said organisations found to have abused funds will be prosecuted and their activities banned in Zimbabwe.
Some 2.3 million Zimbabweans are living with HIV and AIDS, with some 2,500 dying every week from AIDS-related illnesses, according to government statistics.
One in five Zimbabwean children -- one million in all -- are now AIDS orphans, according to UNICEF, which also says that child mortality rates have jumped 50 percent since 1990 due to AIDS.

03/28/2005 12:22 GMT