Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Friday April 23, 1999
"The day can be considered the real beginning of the war against AIDS in our country," National Assembly President Leonce Ngendakumana said.
He was opening a workshop -- attended by U.N. agencies, aid organizations and members of the government -- in the Burundian capital designed to develop strategies to combat the spread of the HIV virus which causes AIDS.
Health Minister Juma Kariburyo said 30,000 people had died of AIDS in two years in Burundi, which has a population of around six million.
"We had less than one percent of infection in 1983 but today the urban area figures are more than 20 percent and more than 14 percent in the rural areas," he added.
But Jeanne Gapiya, president of a Burundian association for people who are HIV-positive, said she feared the true figures could be far higher. Gapiya is HIV-positive and has lost her husband, child, brother and sister to AIDS.
Minister of Defense Colonel Alfred Nkurunziza told the workshop the disease was rampant within the army.
Burundi's Tutsi-dominated army is fighting a bitter civil war against ethnic Hutu rebels. The conflict has caused large refugee movements, which has exacerbated the spread of infectious diseases.
Around 150,000 people have died in Burundi's civil war since October 1993, when soldiers murdered the country's first Hutu president in an attempted coup.
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