Tanzanian Aids project to get £250m funding

Tanzania will spend more than £250 million on its five year national testing programme for HIV and Aids, now in its second stage.

The funding will be used to reduce the effect of the disease on the social and economic climate of the country, health minister Professor David Mwakyusa explained to the EastAfrican.

He noted that in the first phase of the programme, 3.2 million people had gone for voluntary testing of the virus, out of the four million people that were targeted. He also explained that a number of health care facilities had been established.

According to figures from phase one of the project, more women went for testing than men, accounting for 82 out of every 100 who were checked for the deadly virus.

Mr Mwakyusa said that the second phase of the project would attempt the potentially troublesome task of encouraging more men and people in rural areas to take the Aids tests.

Tanzania is one of the worst hit African countries by the Aids pandemic. There is a national HIV/Aids prevalence rate of 6.5 per cent among people aged 15 to 49. In 2005, there were 140,000 Aids deaths, and by the end of the year there were 1.1 million Aids orphans.

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