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US supports HIV/AIDS education in military

Country Map - Congo IRIN
The number of IDPs in the interior of Pool region, which surrounds Brazzaville, remains unknown
    NAIROBI

    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.

    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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