Tanzanian Expands HIV/AIDS Treatment

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania – Former President Clinton and Tanzania’s President Benjamin Mkapa launched a program Wednesday to expand HIV/AIDS treatment in rural areas by training health workers.

At least 30 medical workers will receive advance training each year and will go to remote areas that traditionally lacked health services under the initiative, called the Benjamin William Mkapa National HIV/AIDS Fellows Program.

The initiative is intended to provide treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS in those regions as supplies of cheaper and free life-prolonging medicines, known as antiretroviral drugs, trickle into this East African nation.

“Having drugs around also needed increased availability of highly skilled people to administer them and facilitate proper testing, care and management of those infected and on ARV treatment,” Clinton said. “It is in this area that my foundation and Mkapa’s want to work together.”

The Mkapa Fellows program “is meant to meet that capacity. It is moral, imperative and practical necessity,” Clinton said in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

The Clinton Foundation and Tanzania’s government will assist in the advanced training and deployment of the medical professionals.

The program will be a core part of the Clinton Foundation’s Rural Initiative in Tanzania, which seeks to widen the access to drugs for the most socio-economically disadvantaged and remote populations, according to the statement.

About 1.5 million adults and about 140,000 children are infected with HIV in Tanzania. The East African nation has an estimated 36 million people.

“The most important barrier (to HIV/AIDS treatment) throughout Africa is the lack of well-trained people,” Clinton said. “We recognize that in the end, unless we move quickly, vigorously and effectively against the AIDS pandemic, many of the other great (development) initiatives may not bear full fruit.”

Since 2002, the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative has been assisting countries in implementing integrated care, treatment and prevention programs. It partners with more than a dozen countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.