THE United States Embassy in Harare has disputed recent claims by Information Minister Zhemu Soda on the US$365 million health deal Zimbabwe rejected late last year.
Zhemu told Parliament that the US government sought to collect private health data for medical research which they were not sure would benefit Zimbabweans.
"As the Government, we felt we could not put the lives of our people at risk because we did not know the intention," said Soda.
According to a US Embassy spokesperson who spoke to NewZimbabwe.com this does not make sense as Zimbabwe has benefited from America's medical research through treatment and vaccines for decades.
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The US government through PEPFAR has spearheaded Zimbabwe's fight against HIV/Aids by providing most of the country's ARVs and condoms.
"We reject the recent mischaracterisation of the terms of the Health Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) made by a high-level Government of Zimbabwe official, which described the MOU as a threat when, in fact, it would have provided $365 million in lifesaving assistance over five years for Zimbabwean health programs, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, maternal and child health, laboratories, and outbreak response," said th US Embassy spokesperson.
"The MOU required very reasonable conditions: that the Zimbabwean government co-invest, assuring sustainability of the programs; provide financial accountability and transparency to guarantee funds benefit the people and communities of Zimbabwe; and share specimens when outbreaks occur, which is a long-standing global practice to quickly develop solutions.
"Assertions that the United States was seeking personal/private data of Zimbabweans are categorically false. Any suggestion that Zimbabweans would not have benefitted from American medical research is disproven by decades of U.S. assistance, through which Zimbabweans have received US treatments and vaccines."
The same programme has been successfully presented to 34 countries with a total of US$14.3 billion in health funding.
