Panafrican News Agency - November 30, 2001
The workshop, which comes only a day before the commemoration of the World AIDS Day (WAD) Saturday, is seeking to involve all countries in the region in the trials of an AIDS vaccine that is set to be tested next year and which, if successful, is expected to scale down HIV infections.
Meanwhile, Botswana is gearing up to commemorate the WAD Saturday with an appeal to all men to declare war on the scourge.
The campaign strategists say they are specifically targeting men this year because previous campaigns concentrated on women, forgetting that men were more prone to the virus and that they were often the decision makers in sexual relations.
President Festus Mogae, who will lead the campaign, told a meeting in Gaborone Friday that he is saddened by the increasing numbers of girls who drop out of school due to pregnancies in spite of intensive AIDS awareness campaigns in the country.
As the country commemorates the scourge that has taken a heavy toll among this nation of 1.6 million people, it will be taking cognisance of the fact that nearly 300,000 of them are HIV positive. And that 30 percent of these are pregnant women.
A recent UNDP report on HIV/AIDS placed Botswana and Swaziland among countries with the highest number of infected pregnant women.
But as gloomy as the statistics may sound, the people of Botswana, unlike their counterparts in other African states, have more reasons than one to celebrate.
A high-tech lab that will enable researchers to monitor drug resistance and carry out research on possible cures for the epidemic will be opened Saturday, courtesy of the Harvard Training Institute and Bill Gates of the US, among other donors.
And next year, according to health minister Joy Pumaphi, AIDS patients in Botswana will start receiving free anti-retroviral drugs. The programme will in the first phase benefit 19,000 patients in referral hospitals before adding 20,000 or more patients in its next phase.
Insoniazid, a drug that prevents HIV positive patients from developing TB, will also be introduced into the country.
In addition, all pregnant mothers will benefit from free infant formula and free AZT drugs.
A programme for the prevention of mother to child transmission, which started in 1999, is coming of age. According to health officials, the programme will now cover the whole country.
With all these intervention measures in place, Botswana, unlike other countries in Africa, has a good reason to celebrate for a better future.
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