MASERU, May 7 (AFP) - Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili inaugurated on Friday the country's first AIDS treatment centre as part of a joint effort with a pharmaceutical giant to fight the disease in the world's hardest hit region.
The Senkatana Centre, an extension of Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Maseru, is a pilot site where patients this week started receiving anti-retroviral treatment under a three-year grant program from Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The Lesotho site, aptly named Senkatana after a warrior boy who saved his villagers from the belly of a monster, was launched by Mosisili and Bristol-Myers Squibb vice-president John McGoldrick.
"This centre is an important step toward our national anti-retroviral programme," Lesotho Health Minister Motloheloa Phooko told reporters.
"It is a needed service, in its first two days of operation, it served 50 patients and we have dedicated staff members," he added.
"Lesotho has committed itself to fight HIV/AIDS comprehensively and from all fronts, tackling prevention, stigma, behaviour change and at the top our plan is treatment and care."
The centre is one of five community-based AIDS treatment support programmes in southern Africa, a project to which the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation has pledged 100 million dollars (84 million euros) in total.
Almost a third of Lesotho's population is infected with HIV while nearly 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from the disease which has left some 11 million orphans on the continent.
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