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Govt concern over rural ARV/VCT access

    JOHANNESBURG

    Zambia is busy working to bring antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) facilities to rural areas, Ministry of Health officials announced on Sunday.

    Velepi Mtonga, director of technical services in the ministry, told reporters in the capital, Lusaka, that many people in the countryside were still unable to access ARVs and VCT because they could not afford the transport costs to district hospitals.

    She urged AIDS NGOs not to concentrate their operations in urban areas but rather to extend them to rural areas until such time as the government was able to expand its rollout programme to reach those people.

    Zambia's HIV prevalence rate stands at 16 percent, and the health ministry estimates that up to 1.2 million individuals could be living with the virus.

    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

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