A delegation from the Seke South Clinic visited the Chitungwiza Arts Centre requesting for HIV negative volunteers to participate in an HIV/AIDS vaccination trial volunteer program. The programme is sponsored by the UZ-UCSF Collaborative Research Programme MI Robicides Project. The visiting team was lead by Ms Chihota as the presenter.

The program is part of continued efforts to eradicate the scourge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has adversely impacted Zimbabwe socially and economically. The arts sector in particular has not been spared by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and such research work is imperative towards saving lives and improving the livelihoods of the nation and its nationals.

As AVAC Arts we support such initiatives as they are aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Target 3), which is to ensure that by 2030 we see the end of the epidemics of AIDS amongst other ailments.

We do however hope that the Ministry of Health exercised and continues to exercise due diligence to mitigate potential infection risks and other side-effects that might be associated with such experimental tests. We also find it benefiting that provisions should be made available for the compensation of volunteers that might be affected by these experimental tests.