Efforts to help people with HIV/Aids in Côte d’Ivoire have been hampered by three years of conflict and lack of funds, making it the hardest-hit nation in West Africa, health officials have warned.
”The crisis has affected the fight against Aids,” Health Minister Albert Mabri Toikeusse told Agence France Presse, adding that since a rebellion three years ago split the country into two rival zones, most foreign donors have suspended or halted funding.
According to the health ministry, about 570 000 people, totalling seven percent of the Ivorian population, are HIV carriers or have developed Aids and medical workers are unable to cope with patients and the spread of the virus.
”With the withdrawal of our foreign partners, we were so hard hit and disorganised that our reponse simply couldn’t match the scale of the epidemic,” Toikeusse said.
Money no longer comes in from France, the former colonial power, or the World Bank and other donors.
Since rebels grouped in the New Forces (FN) seized control of the north country soon after a foiled coup against President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002, most of the health and social infrastructure in that half of the country has been destroyed in the war, Toikeusse said.
Both the United Nations and France have deployed thousands of troops to patrol ceasefire lines across it since a initial peace pact was signed in January 2003, but the money needed to care for people living with HIV/Aids in the former economic powerhouse of the region has dried up.
”Health staff and other social workers had to evacuate war zones leaving the patients they were caring for and people they had been reaching with voluntary HIV testing programmes abandoned to themselves,” the minister said, a view reflected by staff for non-governmental organisations working to try to stem the spread of HIV/Aids.
”Since it’s impossible to get some preventive programmes up and running in the rebel zone, we fear the disease rate will soar,” said Dr Siaka Toure, director of the NGO Aconda, which has taken 30% of the HIV-positive people who can be reached in Côte d’Ivoire under its wing.
”We have evidence of a rise in HIV carrier and infection rates in the rebel zone,” Toure said, adding that Aconda estimates that 18% of the population is affected in the central city of Bouake, which is the stronghold of the FN and the second biggest town in the country after the economic capital and port of Abidjan.
Staff from other NGOs said such large numbers of people have moved into the goverment-held south during the crisis and successive international bids to get both political and military settlements implemented on the ground that health workers there are overwhelmed.
”The daily consultation rate in some centres has risen from 20 to about 120,” one official said.
For three months recently, supplies of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat HIV/Aids patients ran out, when national health officials had set a target of reaching 40 000 of 80 000 badly affected patients during the course of this year.
Officials said that of even half those who desperately needed the assistance they had only able to treat 12 000 people with ARVs.
The United States, deeply involved in the struggle against HIV/Aids, gave a sudden boost to efforts in Côte d’Ivoire by providing $42-million to help as part of an emergency plan initiated by President George Bush.
The aim is to treat 7 000 people with ARVs and provide care for 385 000 children orphaned by HIV/Aids, as well as measures to prevent several thousand people from being infected.
”If the crisis could be solved, this would mean the return of volunteer workers and donor partners, which would be a relief and also enable us to speed up the struggle to deal with Aids,” Toikeusse said. – AFP