Tiny Lesotho struggles to fight AIDS timebomb
Tue Nov 29, 2:18 AM ET
MASERU (AFP) - The tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho is one of the world's worst
AIDS-hit countries with a 27 percent infection rate but only about 11 percent of people in need have access to free anti-retroviral drug treatment.
AIDS kills nearly 70 people each day in the landlocked mountainous state but only 6,200
HIV-infected people receive free anti-retroviral drugs of the 56,000 who need them, according to both the government and the UN children's agency
UNICEF.
The government has over the past two years stepped up efforts and is a partner in an ambitious
UNAIDS programme to put some three million people around the world on anti-retrovirals (ARVs) by the end of the year, including 28,000 of Lesotho's 1.8 million people.
"Last year, there were 2,000 and all of them adults and today it is 6,200 of whom 200 are children," said Bertrand Desmoulins, UNICEF's regional representative in Lesotho.
"This is not enough but it is a positive development, better than before and better than nothing at all," he said.
UNICEF last month launched a worldwide programme to convince the governments in the worse HIV-affected countries to put children at the centre of their efforts to fight the disease.
Lesotho has the world's third highest HIV/AIDS rate at 27 percent, according to the latest figures released by UNAIDS.
There are already some 100,000 AIDS orphans, 22,000 children have HIV and some 7,000 babies are born HIV-positive every year.
In this situation, it is not surprising that Lesotho has become one of the first countries in the world to provide special ARV drugs prepared specially for children and put in syrups instead of pills.
Former US president
Bill Clinton in July inaugurated a specialised clinic in the Lesotho capital Maseru. His Clinton Foundation hopes to distribute free ARV drugs to some 750 children by the end of the year.
During that visit, Clinton said: "Lesotho is helping to prove that paediatric HIV/AIDS treatment is indeed possible in the developing world."
However, efforts to stem the pandemic have been handicapped by the fact that vast swathes of the essentially rural country lack proper roads and the medical infrastructure is skeletal.
A major impediment is the high cost of treatment -- until recently each adult treatment cost 200 dollars a year while for each child it was an astounding 1,200 dollars per annum.
Lesotho is among the world's poorest countries with a per capita income of 590 dollars a year although two-thirds of the population earn less than one dollar a day.
However, a partnership between the government, UNICEF and the Clinton Foundation -- has led to lower costs; 140 dollars per adult and 220 dollars for every child.
But other problems remain. The ARVs need to be stocked in refrigerators -- a luxury in this penury-stricken country where most people do not have access to electricity. |
