By Correspondent
Bulawayo City Council has dismissed as sensationalism recent headlines which alleged the city has over 70 percent HIV positivity rate.
In a statement the city’s Acting Town Clerk Dr Mzingwane said their report had been taken out of context.
According to Council, two publications had headlines stating that Bulawayo has a 70% HIV positivity rate while another said Bulawayo has alarming statistics on HIV.
The publications added that, “90% of women aged between 16 and 50 plus tested for HIV in Bulawayo in June 2024.
Meanwhile, 71.7 were said to be positive.
However the Local Authority has dismissed the stories.
“Both articles took the City of Bulawayo report out of context and sensationalized the information.
“The data was extracted from the Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid and Camera (VIAC) program.
The VIAC program targets mainly HIV positive women who are screened for cervical cancer.
These are people who are already on Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) as they are confirmed positive.
According to Council these women are 6 times more likely to develop cervical cancer compared to those who are negative.
“Therefore the reports cited in the above-named articles are not representative of the HIV positivity rates in general among the Bulawayo population.
Instead, they are skewed towards HIV positive women attending clinics for cervical cancer screening.
Currently for Zimbabwe the HIV prevalence rate for the 15-49 age groups is 10.49%.
Meanwhile for Bulawayo the same age group has a prevalence rate of 11.75%.
