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Rural poor lack access to AIDS drugs

    JOHANNESBURG
    The international medical NGO, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) on Thursday began supplying free antiretroviral drug treatment to HIV-positive people in Zambia's north-eastern Nchelenge district. MSF said a massive scaling up of treatment programmes in rural areas was imperative because of the continuing breakdown of the communities by HIV/AIDS. Joke van Peteghem, the MSF head of mission in Zambia said in a statement the organisation hoped to show there were no more excuses for the lack of treatment to rural HIV-positive Zambians by having 400 patients on treatment by the end of 2005. Peteghem said: "By proving that anti-AIDS treatment is possible in a rural poor society, we hope to trigger other actors, such as the UN, NGOs, donor governments and the Zambian government, to step up their efforts in this regard."

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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