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AIDS
conference underway in Zimbabwe
IRIN News
March 04, 2004
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39858
HARARE - A conference
on the scaling up of antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in Southern Africa
opened this week in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The first of
its kind in the country, the event is being hosted by the Pan-African
Treatment Access Movement (PATAM), the Treatment Action Campaign,
Zimbabwe Activists on HIV and AIDS (ZAHA) and the Southern Africa
HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS).
Addressing journalists
on Wednesday at the start of the conference, SAfAIDS executive director,
Lois Lunga, said the meeting could provide an opportunity for countries
to review some of the challenges faced in the roll-out of ARVs.
He said the
three-day conference, titled "Scaling up Treatment in Southern
Africa: A Way Forward", was also expected to focus on the need
for more public information on antiretroviral drug treatment.
"The conference
would also focus on the World Health Organisation (WHO) 3 by 5 initiative,
which is aimed at providing antiretroviral treatment to three million
people by 2005," Lunga was quoted as saying.
The WHO initiative
could this month see Zimbabwe's major hospitals offering ARVs to
people living with HIV/AIDS under a partnership with UNAIDS and
the country's Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.
A representative
of the clergy, Bishop Trevor Manhanga, said it was time Africans
discarded their perceived indifference towards the epidemic.
"This conference
has to find out what is going wrong. Despite the suffering and deaths
of our compatriots, we continue as though nothing is wrong. If debt-ridden
bankrupt African countries can find the money to buy luxury vehicles
for their government ministers and political cronies, then why can
they not find the money to ease the suffering of their people infected
by HIV/AIDS with access to ARVs and other essential medicines,"
Manhanga said.
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