New HIV/AIDS plan to treat tens of thousands

Ethiopia's new three-year HIV/AIDS plan will include the provision of free drugs to 320,000 HIV-positive people. "Twenty hospitals have been selected and 30,000 people are going to get antiretroviral therapy this year, and more than 200,000 within three years," Deputy Health Minister Tedros Adhanom told reporters during the launch of the plan. The drugs will primarily be sponsored by the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, (PEPFAR), the brainchild of George W Bush, who in 2003 called for $15 billion to tackle the pandemic in most of Africa and the Caribbean. Ethiopia, where an estimated 1.5 million people in a population of 70 million are living with HIV and AIDS, is to receive $17 million for 2005.