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19/12/2003 |
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Guinea-Bissau has opened its first treatment centre for people living with HIV/AIDS in a newly refurbished hospital, which will provide antiretroviral therapy free of charge. It is is situated in the 116-bed Raoul Follerau hospital in the capital Bissau which reopened on Thursday after being completely destroyed during the 1998/99 civil war.
The hospital was renovated with the help of a US$5 million grant from the Santo Egidio Community, a Roman Catholic centre for the promotion of peace based in Rome. It played a key role in negotiating an end to the civil war in Mozambique in the early 1990's. Marco Impagliazzo, the president of the Santo Egidio Community, said at a ceremony to mark the reopening of the hospital that its HIV/AIDS treatment centre would distribute anti-retroviral drugs free of charge to people living with the disease in Guinea-Bissau. The hospital would provide free medical treatment for children and for tuberculosis patients, he added. Impagliazzo said the hospital would also treat AIDS patients from other countries in the sub-region. Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony of 1.3 million people, is bounded to the north by Senegal and to the south and east by Guinea-Conakry. According to the latest available estimates from UNAIDS, there were 17,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Guinea-Bissau at the end of 2001. About 1,200 people in the country died as a result of infections associated with the virus in that year.
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