Villagers in the rural Gwanda villages are in a panic mode as the country’s statistics officials go through the villages conducting a national health survey which involves involuntary testing for HIV and amnesia.
The National Health Demographic Survey is being conducted nationwide by ZIMSTATS on behalf of the Ministry of Health. The exercise meant to last six months, involves random sampling of people to check on the prevalence of HIV and anaemia in the country.
The exercise includes involuntary testing of the respondents’ blood and where anaemia is detected the respondent is given treatment immediately, however HIV test results are not immediately disclosed to the person involved but retained for statistics. ZIMSTATS officials have been trained by the Ministry of Health to administer the tests and treatment.
However, Gwanda villagers who claim not to have been fully informed of the exercise are resisting the exercise and physically running away from ZIMSTATS officials carrying out the programme. Information gathered from the villagers indicates that the villagers are against the exercise as misinformation about the whole programme is being spread around.
Weird claims are amass within the communities such as that the exercise is being run to pick out HIV positive people in order to quarantine them out of the communities. Some are also being made to believe that the officials are in fact deliberately injecting them with the HIV Virus in order to reduce the population which government is failing to feed.
Samuel Ndlovu a headman in one village south of Gwanda told Zimeye correspondent that his village is in a serious panic mode as people are not sure what the exercise entails and resultantly wrong information about the exercise is being spread within the communities.
“This exercise was not fully communicated to the people, we only saw people making their way into the villages demanding to test people’s blood and not quite explained what they are being tested for,” he said.
“Normally when a government programme of this nature is to be done we get notices from councillors and other heads including radio announcements but this one was not explained we just saw people coming with posters and beginning to do the tests and that is not fair to us as villagers,” said one Thabang Setoboli from the same village.
The NHDS exercise is expected to be carried out countrywide in both rural and urban settlements. A quick check on the publicity of the exercise revealed that even the urban residents were not fully informed of the exercise and are resisting the programme. A ZIMSTATS official carrying out the exercise in Gwanda town confirmed that there is a general heavy resistance to the exercise which she attributed to low publicity and the stigma still associated to HIV/AIDS.
“There is indeed strong resistance to the exercise particularly in the urban areas and most likely this is due to lack of publicity on the exercise. We hope that sensitisation of the programme will be intensified as we progress and people will begin cooperating with us,” she said.
“There are numerous incidents where we are dismissed sometimes even violently by the people who claim that the exercise is not a priority to them at this juncture,” she added.
An official statement from both the Central Statistics Office, ZIMSTATS and the Ministry of Health is still being sourced as both offices in Gwanda and Bulawayo asked for written submissions on the matter.