US supports HIV/AIDS education in military

The US government has lent its support to an initiative to educate the Congolese military on the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS. A contribution of US $65,000 was made on 28 March by the US ambassador to the Republic of Congo (ROC), David Kaeuper, to the director of health services of the Forces armees congolaises (FAC), the Congolese government announced from the capital, Brazzaville, on Monday. The effort is being implemented by a local NGO called PRESIEC (Projet pour la prevention du SIDA dans les ecoles du Congo), which has developed similar behavioural-change programmes for schools in cooperation with the Congolese government's national programme to combat AIDS (Programme national de lutte contre le SIDA). "As part of the US's global AIDS prevention programmes", the Congolese military has been selected for support as it has been "particularly hard-hit as both a victim of, and vector for, the spread of the disease", Ruth Parent, first secretary of the US embassy in neighbouring Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, told IRIN on Wednesday. Upwards of 20 percent of hospital beds in the ROC are occupied by military AIDS patients, indicating a very concerning level of prevalence of the HIV virus among members of the FAC, Parent noted.