Package announced to address HIV/AIDS scourge

Health ministers from the Great Lakes have been issuing dire warnings about the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region. A two-day conference held in Kigali to launch the Great Lakes Initiative against AIDS (GLIA) ended on Wednesday, with an announcement by the director of Rwanda's National AIDS Control Centre (PNLS), Innocent Ntaganira, that US $400,000 would be set aside for an HIV/AIDS prevention programme along the main road axes of the region. According to the Rwanda News Agency, he also announced a further US $4,000 for programmes aimed at reducing transmission of the virus among refugees and displaced people. The total package, worth around US $1.2 million, will also be used for developing an information exchange system between the countries, improving care for sufferers and for research and coordination, RNA said. The GLIA initiative is sponsored by UNAIDS. Burundi's Health Minister Juma Mohamed Kariburyo told the meeting that three quarters of hospital beds in his country were occupied by HIV/AIDS patients, and 20 percent of the 400,000 population of Bujumbura was infected. He warned that unless the disease was brought under control, Burundi's life expectancy in 10 years' time will have fallen to 39 years of age. His Rwandan counterpart, Ezechias Rwabuhihi, said the disease was "spreading like a bushfire" in Rwanda. An estimated 20-30 percent of people aged between 30-40 in the country are believed to be seropositive. Throughout the region, nearly five million people have HIV/AIDS, 99 percent of them between 15 and 49, the PANA news agency reported. The countries represented at the meeting were Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. The Democratic Republic of Congo did not attend. The meeting noted that only in Uganda has the prevalence of HIV/AIDS decreased, by about 50 percent between 1993-98, PANA said.