NAIROBI, Feb 19 (AFP) - Some 4,000 women from across Kenya are to gather in Nairobi on Friday for the first national AIDS conference to address AIDS issues, health ministry officials said.

"We are expecting about 4,000 or even more women from around the country to attend the conference to tackle HIV/AIDS issues," several senior officials told AFP by telephone on Thursday.

Topics to be discussed in the three-day conference include proposed bills on HIV/AIDS and women's rights that are to be debated in parliament and the role of women in fighting HIV/AIDS, discrimination and stigmatisation.

The meeting aims at building consensus and providing participants with skills to fight the disease, especially at local grassroots levels.

Last December, Kenya's first lady Lucy Kibaki declared total war on discrimination against AIDS patients in Kenya, saying that this would promote and encourage "social involvement in the fight against HIV/AIDS at the grassroots and national levels."

Kenya has lost some 1.5 million people to AIDS since the disease was discovered in the early 1980s and currently around 2.5 million are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

According to a recent report by the Forum for African Women Educationalist (FAWE), more than 80 percent of the world's HIV/AIDS infected women are from sub-Saharan Africa.

President Mwai Kibaki is expected to inaugurate the conference on Saturday.

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