3 December 2008
Maputo — The Maputo Military Hospital on Wednesday received a fully rehabilitated "Integrated Care and Treatment Centre", financed by the United States Embassy to the tune of 600,000 US dollars.
The unit will specialise particularly in anti-retroviral therapy (ARVT) for HIV-positive patients, and tuberculosis and other opportunist infections that strike people whose immune systems have been weakened by HIV. But it will also deal with malaria and offer mother and child health services.
The centre is equipped with a laboratory, observation rooms with 11 beds, a pharmacy, and a centre for distributing food supplements, among other services. It will serve not only members of the armed forces (FADM) and their families, but also the general public. Medical sources say it could attend over 200 patients a day.
At the handover ceremony, Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi said the centre is "a great contribution by the United States to the efforts our country has been making to reduce the levels of HIV infection among soldiers and the civilian population".
Nyussi saw the centre as part of the implementation of Mozambique's new Strategy for Accelerating Prevention of HIV Infection, which was launched by President Armando Guebuza on Monday, World AIDS Day
This strategy, said the minister, "intends to identify the most critical interventions that can contribute to a significant reduction in the incidence of HIV infection".
The charge d'affaires at the US Embassy, Todd Chapman said that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched by US President George Bush in 2003, has so far spent almost 19 billion dollars in fighting the pandemic across the globe, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Of this sum, 600 million dollars had gone to Mozambique. PEPFAR funds, Chapman said, had helped raise the number of Mozambicans receiving the life prolonging anti-retroviral drugs to 120,000, and had supported 200 Mozambican health units in treating HIV.
Chapman added that the US was by far the largest supplier of condoms to Mozambique. So far it had sent about a billion.
He noted that Bush had promulgated legislation that will provide a further 40 billion dollars to the fight against HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases over the next five years. Mozambique is expected to receive over a billion dollars during this period.
This programme is thought certain to continue under the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has expressed support for Bush's work against AIDS.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
