Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - December 15, 2005
Zoe Eisenstein
A team from the international medical group Medicos do Mundo offered tests for the virus which causes AIDS at a hospital on the tiny isle, which lies some 140 km (90 miles) from its larger sister island of Sao Tome in the Gulf of Guinea.
"This is a small and isolated island but people here should be given exactly the same chance as everyone in the bigger island of Sao Tome to receive information about HIV and get access to tests," said Bruno Cardoso, the NGO's coordinator in the archipelago.
Madalena Santos, a 39-year-old mother of four, was one of the first to arrive for screening at the island's main town of Santo Antonio.
"If we know that we're infected we can't make sure that we don't infect others and if we know we're not, we can make sure it stays that way," she said.
In 2003, Medicos do Mundo became the first organisation to carry out tests in Sao Tome, which has a population of around 150,000 people. Some 4,000 tests have been done, with a prevalence rate of 2.4 percent.
But Cardoso believes the rate is higher as most testing was done in urban areas where people are informed about AIDS.
"In the south of Sao Tome for example, people have less access to condoms and have multiple partners," he added.
The former Portuguese colony, which recently discovered large off-shore oil deposits, remains one of the only African countries to offer retroviral therapy to all HIV sufferers.
But Cardoso said the challenges of combating the spread of the disease in the impoverished nation remained enormous.
"This is a small country but the roads are bad and people don't have access to hospitals or health centres," he said. "It can take two hours to walk to a place that has condoms so people often prefer not to use them. That's very dangerous."
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