15/08/2003

Mozambique Providing Quality AIDS Treatment

Maputo, 15 Ago (AIM)- Mozambican Health Minister Francisco Songane said recently in Beira, the capital of the central Sofala province, that the country's health authorities are providing a quality treatment to AIDS sufferers, not a "second class" health care, as some people claim. "It is not a second class treatment as some people claim, looking at our fragil economy. We are not providing treatment meant for poor countries. We are providing treatment according to the manual approved by the World Heatlth Organzation" he said.

Songane further explained that treatmet of AIDS is complex in technical, medical, social and economical terms.

" When we started with this treatment two years ago, some people thought that we were crazy, due to the poverty that Mozambique is facing. This is what was in the air. These were the doubts at the time".

" We said that the alternative was death. We would seat down and watch a procession of coffins passing by. We would watch the degradation of our economy and society. But we looked forward and today about one thousand people, seven hundred in Maputo and three hundred in Sofala, are benefitting of these medicines, and the drop out rate is only one per cent" said Songane.

He was speaking during the inauguration ceremony of the Chissungura HIV/AIDS vertical transmission prevention Health Centre, in the outskirts of Beira. The idea is to prevent transmission of the virus from mother to child, during pregnancy or at birth.

This unit was built as part of a joint project which is being carried out by the Ministry of Health, and the Saint Egidio Community, an Italian NGO, in cooperation with the German government, which has contributed with 35,000 US dollars, through its GTZ agency.

Songane said also that the opening of the centre is an important landmark. "It is one more obstacle that has been removed on the way to our development. Fortunately, we have solid partners who work with responsibility and determination, such as Saint Egidio, GTZ, Doctors Without Borders, and International Alliance for Health". In this region, this experience started at the Beira Central Hospital, two years ago, aiming at reducing the number of children infected during pregnancy or at birth and, so far, at least twenty healthy children were born to HIV infected mothers, who were treated with "nevirapine".