20100922
africanews

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean prosecutors on Wednesday withdrew charges against six health workers, four of them from the United States, accused of dispensing AIDS drugs without a licence, their lawyer said.

The six members of a Californian-based Christian volunteer health service which runs two clinics in Zimbabwe working with AIDS orphans and HIV-positive patients, were arrested on September 10 in Harare.

"The Attorney General's office has decided not to prosecute them. The police were just being overzealous in arresting them in the first place," the health workers' lawyer, Jonathan Samkange told Reuters.

The health workers' group is made up of a doctor, two nurses and a community volunteer from the United States plus a Zimbabwean doctor and another from New Zealand.

The volunteers had been charged for dispensing medicines to AIDS patients at unlicensed premises without the supervision of a pharmacist and fined $200 each when they appeared in court last week.

Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV rates in the world and the destruction of its public health system during a decade of economic crisis has left it largely dependent on donor organisations and church-based institutions for essential health services.