Thousands of women in Mashonaland West's Chinhoyi town have been left with the difficult choice of declining sex or simply risk unwanted pregnancies, amid reports of shortages on contraceptive pills during weekends.
A survey conducted by Newzimbabwe.com revealed that most pharmacies in and around town tend to run out of the well sought after pills as from Friday every week in week out.
Chinhoyi town has at least six pharmacies.
Some owners of the pharmacies who spoke to Newzimbabwe.com said the demand for the contraceptive pill (morning after) has always being high during weekends and they are failing to get adequate supplies during the course of the week to meet the demand.
"We are surprised by this sudden high demand for the contraceptive pills. As a pharmacy, we had not anticipated a change in demand for the pills," said Farai Kagonye a pharmacist in one of the town's pharmacies.
A visit to Good Shepherd Pharmacy showed that the only contraceptive pill available was for breast feeding mothers whilst the rest of the pharmacies had nothing in stock.
A pharmacist at the pharmacy said they do not stock the contraceptive pills as they do not add any meaningful monetary value to their business.
"We do not stock the pills because they do not give us any profit. It does not pay us much, so to tie our funds in a product that does not give us value for our money will be a waste of time," he said.
The demand of the morning after pill shows that government's effort in the fight against the spread of HIV will not yield the desired results of achieving zero new infections.
The Pharmacists attributed the shortage to the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council (ZNFPC) as they are some of the major suppliers of contraceptives.
Responding to the claims, an official from ZNFPC's Chinhoyi office referred this reporter to their head office in Harare.
But the ZNFPC head office has failed to respond to written questions sent at its request two weeks ago.