Failed HIV/AIDS efforts under discussion

Anti-AIDS strategies in Mozambique have failed to curb the spread of the HI virus, the executive secretary of Mozambique's National AIDS Council, Joana Mangueira, has revealed. Addressing a public debate on prevention strategies in the capital, Maputo, Mangueira said the increase in HIV/AIDS prevalence rates was proof that efforts undertaken so far had not been effective. The latest figures from the Ministry of Health indicate that 13.6 percent of Mozambicans aged between 15 and 49 are HIV-positive with the disease having claimed the lives of some 57,000 people in 2003. "We want the debate to extend to other parts of the country, with wide-ranging, democratic, frank and direct discussions that will allow us to identify the reasons why the strategies implemented so far are not having the desired effects," the Mozambican news agency, AIM quoted Mangueira as saying.