New hope in fight against HIV/AIDS

Lesotho's HIV/AIDS programme received a boost recently with the announcement of a US $12.5 million grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria. The country's coordinating mechanism (CCM) submitted a proposal for reducing HIV prevalence by 15 percent, by introducing and scaling up existing government, community and NGO projects over five years. The tiny mountain kingdom has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, estimated at 31 percent. The grant was formally approved at a meeting last week between a Global Fund representative and a government delegation. Up to US $10.5 million will be allocated for the HIV/AIDS programme and $2 million for the TB programme. The agreement providing access to the grant funds is expected to be signed within three weeks, principal secretary to the ministry of health, Teleko Ramotsoari, told PlusNews. "This is welcomed by Basotho and the government, and everybody is looking forward to the money. The only thing now is to make sure it reaches the ground level," Ramotsoari said. One of the interventions proposed by the Lesotho CCM is the provision of antiretroviral (ARV) therapy to 50 percent of those who need it. Existing pilot sites will be expanded to reach this target. But AIDS activists were cautiously optimistic about how this would benefit those directly affected by the pandemic. "We still have an inadequate infrastructure, we've only got one monitoring machine, only 4 or 5 doctors have been trained and there are no support staff. So how are they going to spend the money, where will they start?," an activist who asked not to be named, told PlusNews. Although the country's proposal also identified the need to build the capacity of community programmes, it was not clear how this would be achieved. "It is critical that community-based groups in villages are empowered. They can't write proposals and attend these workshops, but they need to learn so that they can be heard," the activist added. According to Lesotho Red Cross Society HIV/AIDS coordinator, Molooane Ramakhulu, one of the main priorities should be to address the "most basic of our needs - information dissemination". "We need to get the information down to the grassroots level - not only what HIV means, but how we can live with it." Ramakhulu was upbeat however, about the impact of the Fund's grant. The expansion of voluntary counselling and testing sites would, for instance, overcome the stigma surrounding the disease. "People need to realise the benefits of being tested. They can now access ARVs, food supplements and nutritional guidelines. TB is becoming rampant and people can now be treated for that. If we take it one step at a time, we will definitely see the benefits," she added.