Estimated Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1 847 990 at noon Wednesday July 19 2006
A new centre for children infected with HIV, which opened in Maputo this week, plans to use advanced technology to monitor and treat the disease.
The project is part of the Italian NGO Sant’Egidio Community’s Dream (Drug Resource Enhancement against Aids and Malnutrition) programme.
‘The centre wants to empower activities for the treatment of children, and wants to guarantee to HIV-positive mothers the possibility of not transmitting the disease to their children,” said Andrea Riccardi, founder of the NGO.
The centre contains a substantial laboratory, including equipment to measure viral loads, and CD4 counts.
Riccardi also inaugurated a nutritional centre in the southern city of Matola.
The centre treats 709 children, who are infected with HIV, or whose parents have died of Aids. ‘We give food and medical care to the children,” said the centre’s director, Lidia Lisboa, ‘because sometimes the children appear here ill, and their parents don’t take them to hospital, saying they have no money. We can’t leave the children like that.”
According to data from the Sant’Egidio community, 8 000 patients are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs through the Dream programme — about a third of all those receiving ARVs in Mozambique. — Don Camillo, CAJ News