Clinton tackles Aids

2005-07-20 10:31

Dar Es Salaam - Former United States President Bill Clinton is expected in Tanzania on Wednesday where he is to unveil a new anti-Aids programme on the fourth leg of a six-nation Africa tour to promote the fight against the deadly disease.

Clinton is to arrive in Dar es Salaam around 12:00 from South Africa and will launch a scheme with Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa to recruit and train health care workers in HIV/Aids care and management in rural Tanzania, officials here said.

The Benjamin William Mkapa National HIV/Aids fellows programme, to be funded by Clinton's foundation, plans to train and deploy to the countryside at least 30 medical workers per year.

About two million HIV positive

"The purpose is to recruit, train, deploy and retain skilled professionals to support the aggressive implementation of Tanzania's response to HIV/Aids," the Clinton Foundation said.

"Mkapa Fellows will receive further training in HIV/Aids clinical care and treatment, in addition to administration and management, before serving three years at the district level in the most remote areas," it said in a statement released ahead of Clinton's arrival.

About two million Tanzanians have died of Aids since 1983 and a recent survey showed about 7% of Tanzania's adult population, about two million people, are now HIV positive.

Only a small fraction of those infected are now receiving life-prolonging anti-retroviral treatment although the government hopes to have at least 44 000 on the therapy by the end of this year and between 400 000 and 500 000 by 2008.

More people to receive anti-retrovirals

The Clinton Foundation said the new programme would form the core of a rural HIV/Aids initiative for Tanzania and Mkapa fellows would "be well placed to enable rapid scale-up of the anti-retroviral therapy services that can save tens of thousands of lives".

On Thursday, Clinton will travel to Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar, where Muslims comprise 95% of the population and Aids sufferers are often stigmatised, before heading on to Kenya and Rwanda where his tour ends.

His trip, half of which included stops made by US First Lady Laura Bush on an Aids-related tour last week, has already taken him to Mozambique, Lesotho and South Africa.

According to the United Nations Aids programme, sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 60% of people around the world living with HIV. In 2004, an estimated 3.1 million people in the region became newly infected.

- AFP