Share & more
Guinea-Bissau has opened its first treatment centre for people living with HIV/AIDS in a newly refurbished hospital, which will provide antiretroviral therapy free of charge.
It is is situated in the 116-bed Raoul Follerau hospital in the capital Bissau which reopened on Thursday after being completely destroyed during the 1998/99 civil war.
The hospital was renovated with the help of a US $5 million grant from the Santo Egidio Community, a Roman Catholic centre for the promotion of peace based in Rome.
Marco Impagliazzo, the president of the Santo Egidio Community, said at a ceremony to mark the reopening of the hospital that its HIV/AIDS treatment centre would distribute antiretroviral drugs free of charge to people living with the virus in Guinea-Bissau.
Impagliazzo said the hospital would also treat AIDS patients from other countries in the sub-region. Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony of 1.3 million people, is bounded to the north by Senegal and to the south and east by Guinea-Conakry.
According to the latest available estimates from UNAIDS, there were 17,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Guinea-Bissau at the end of 2001. About 1,200 people in the country died as a result of AIDS-related illnesses that year.
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