AIDS kills about 10 people every hour in Malawi and the government of the impoverished southern African nation is increasingly unable to cope with the crisis, Health Minister Heatherwick Ntaba said Monday.
– This is a disaster because it means that the country is losing 240 people every day to HIV/AIDS and at the end of 10 years an estimated 876.000 will die if the trend continues,” Ntaba said in an interview.
Malawi, with a population of about 11 million, is one of the countries at the center of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to almost two-thirds of those infected with HIV/AIDS worldwide.
The government estimates that about 1 million Malawians are infected with the HIV virus and about 640.000 have died from AIDS-related causes since 1985.
Ntaba said Malawi was increasingly finding itself outpaced by the disease, unable to spend the money necessary to develop proper strategies against it while simultaneously losing medical personnel to AIDS-related illness or better jobs overseas.
Malawi now spends about 12 US dollar per capita on health annually, far below the 36 dollar per capita recommended by Health Ministry officials.
– Spending 12 per capita on health … we are not going to make a dent (gøre indhug i) in the fight against HIV/AIDS,’ Ntaba said.
Research by Malawis Health Ministry shows that about 46 percent of all new adult infections occur in people younger than 24 with about 60 percent of them being girls.
Malawi last year launched a 196 million dollar plan to distribute free anti-retroviral drugs under a five-year program paid for by the global fund set up to tackle AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
Fifty sites across the landlocked country were identified to receive the drugs, but Health Ministry officials said only about 50.000 people were now getting them, well below target.
Kilde: The Push Journal
