‘Show love to HIV positive people’
President Joyce Banda yesterday called on Malawians to show love to people living positively with HIV and Aids.
Presiding over the World Aids Day national commemoration in Kasungu, Banda warned that discriminating against HIV positive people is a crime.
“When you are distributing things, even jobs, do not forget people living positively with HIV and Aids. They can be more hard working than those that are HIV and Aids negative,” she said.
The President also urged pregnant mothers to immediately start taking anti-retroviral (ARVs) drugs when they are tested positive with HIV
Banda also commended the men and women that publicly declare their status, saying that is one way of fighting the virus.
Commenting on reports of the shortage of drugs in some hospitals in the country, the President blamed politics for the alarm.
On Friday, Vice-President Khumbo Kachali toured the Central Medical Stores Trust (CMST) warehouses in Lilongwe where, she said, it was established that there is an adequate stock of drugs.
But Banda decried drug pilferage from public hospitals and pharmacies. She said Malawi High Commissioner to India Perks Ligoya dispatched a consignment of drugs which, she said, the Minister of Health cannot trace.
