Relief NGO tackling AIDS in north

More than 3,000 women and children affected by or living with HIV/AIDS in northern Uganda's Gulu district are receiving assistance from the 'Area Development Programme' (ADP) of the international NGO, World Vision. According to ADP district coordinator Peter Walyaula, at least 70 percent of the HIV-positive people in the area were women. "Every year we get about US $40,000 from our donors, mainly the United States, Japan and the Netherlands, for medical treatment and nutritional requirements to the people we are taking care of," Walyaula told the local New Vision newspaper. He said some of the recipients - mostly mothers and children whose husbands and parents had either died or were suffering from AIDS-related illnesses - were already accessing free anti-AIDS drugs from St Mary's Lacor and Gulu referral hospitals.