Bangui gets $8 million for HIV/AIDS patients

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has granted the Central African Republic US $8.2 million to support the government's efforts of providing cheaper treatment for HIV/AIDS-infected people, state-owned Television Centrafricaine reported on Friday. An agreement for the funding was signed on Friday in the capital, Bangui, between the UN Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative, Stan Nkwain, for the Fund, and Prime Minister Abel Goumba, for the government. Nkwain said the funds, to be managed by the UNDP, would be used to care for HIV/AIDS patients. Goumba said the grant agreement was a result of long negotiations with the Global Fund. The document was also signed by Christian Yangue, the chairman of the Reseau Centrafricain des Personnes Vivant avec le VIH-SIDA, an association grouping 4,000 HIV-infected people nationwide. According to a study carried out by the Institut Pasteur in December 2002, the CAR is the most HIV-affected nation in the central Africa subregion. The study shows that 14.8 percent of the country's 3.5 million people were HIV-positive, with a higher rate in rural areas and provincial towns. In early 2003, the government, in conjunction with three French NGOs, started building a $230,000 triple-therapy HIV/AIDS centre in Bangui, in order to provide patients with cheaper antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. Construction of the centre, which was planned to take about six months, stalled when former army chief of staff Francois Bozize overthrew President Ange-Felix Patasse on 15 March. The coup took place a week after Patasse had laid a foundation stone at the centre. The centre is expected to provide ARV drugs at lower prices, but its construction is yet to resume.