Five U.S. medical workers arrested in Zimbabwe

Five American medicalprofessionals, including two doctors, two nurses and one organizer were arrested Thursday on their way to distribute donated AIDS drugs in Zimbabwe, media reports say.

The Americans were held in Harare on Saturday, waiting to face a charge of dispensing the medicines without the supervision of a pharmacist or sans proper licenses, according to their lawyer Jonathan Samukange.

These Americans, who are affiliated with the Allen Temple Baptist Church AIDS Ministry in Oakland, California were scheduled to appear in court on Saturday for a bail hearing, their lawyer said. On Monday they will also appear before a magistrate.

Since 2000, the church has sent its members to Zimbabwe three or four times a year to disperse antiretroviral drugs, dietary supplements, clothing and nutritious foods to people with AIDS throughout impoverished regions within the country.

The American medical workers, whose names were not released, reportedly carried enough antiretroviral drugs to treat about 800 people with AIDS in Harare and Mutoko for four months.  Most of the beneficiaries would have been orphaned children.

A police spokesman, Detective Inspector Augustin Zimbili, was quoted by a local newspaper called The Herald, as saying “There is a risk of dispensation of expired drugs. When premises are not licensed, it is difficult to check if the act is being complied with.”

The lawyer for the Americans said the charge was not justified because the doctors who dispensed the antiretroviral drugs, Dr. Andrew Reid and Dr. Tembinhosi Ncomanzi, were licensed to practice there. 

But he said the Americans will be released after a bail hearing on Monday and the maximum penalty will likely be a fine.

The arrest was due likely to a soured relationship with a Zimbabwe charity, Kenric Bailey, a member of the AIDS ministry, was cited as saying.

Zimbabwe reported its first case of AIDS in 1985. By the end of the 1980s, about 10 percent of adults there were thought to be infected with HIV; between 1995 and 1997, the number rose to more than 36 percent.

Right now, one of four children in Zimbabwe is orphaned because one or both of their parents died of AIDS. The United States each year donates millions of dollars to help the country fight HIV/AIDS through an American agency called USAID.

USAID says on its website that it provides Zimbabwe with a whole range of services including "HIV/AIDS counseling and testing services, social marketing of condoms, integration of HIV/AIDS measures into existing family planning programs, strengthening the capacity of civil society to formulate and advocate for improved HIV/AIDS policies, support for community responses to the needs of orphans and other vulnerable children, and support services for those living with HIV/AIDS."

The agency helps prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and has also begun to support the introduction of anti-retroviral therapy interventions in Zimbabwe.

Jimmy Downs and editing by Rachel Stockton