HARARE, June 14 (AFP) - Zimbabwe, one of the countries worst hit by HIV and AIDS, will open its first national AIDS conference on Tuesday to take stock of efforts to fight the pandemic and find more ways of tackling the disease.
More than 500 delegates from government, business and civic groups are expected to attend the four-day conference sponsored by the European Union and UNAIDS among others.
President Robert Mugabe will address the conference but the keynote speaker will be Zambia's former president Kenneth Kaunda, whose son died of AIDS in 1986.
Kaunda, Zambia's first black president, is now an AIDS awareness activist, working to remove the stigma attached to HIV and AIDS by speaking openly about his son's disease.
Zimbabwe has been in the grip of the AIDS pandemic for two decades, with conservative estimates putting the prevalence rate of HIV and AIDS at 25 percent, with 30 percent of pregnant women infected with HIV.
At least 3,000 Zimbabweans die every week of AIDS and about 70 percent of patients admitted to Zimbabwe's hospitals suffer from HIV and AIDS-related illnesses, according to independent studies.
Last year government hospital morgues were reportedly unable to cope with the large number of AIDS victims, with the numbers of bodies exceeding their intake capacity more than threefold.
"Zimbabwe's first national HIV and AIDS conference will provide a forum to share programme successes, lessons learned and current model activities, in order to point the way forward to national expansion of these successes," a statement on the conference said.
"While a lot has been done to address the problem of HIV/AIDS, the challenge to prevent HIV transmissions remains significant and complex," said a conference document.
"In spite of near universal levels of awareness having been achieved, knowledge gaps, negative attitudes, inappropriate decision-making and negative behaviour still characterise the AIDS arena," it stated.
The health ministers from Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho are also expected to share their countries' experiences in fighting HIV and AIDS.
In 1999, Zimbabwe declared HIV/AIDS a national disaster and launched a national AIDS Trust fund financed by a three percent levy on income tax to finance AIDS-fighting programmes.
Last month the government introduced free anti-retrovirals administered to patients at state-run hospitals. It aims to roll out the anti-AIDS drugs to tens of thousands of people.
A Zimbabwean pharmaceutical company started manufacturing generic anti-retroviral drugs, claiming it is probably the first generic company to produce ARVs in Africa.
The conference has as its main focus care, treatment and support for those with HIV and AIDS.
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