Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 12/19/2003

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U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network

CONTENT:

1 - GUINEA-BISSAU: Country's first AIDS treatment centre opens in

renovated hospital

1 - GUINEA-BISSAU: Country's first AIDS treatment centre opens in

renovated hospital

BISSAU, 19 December (PLUSNEWS) - Guinea-Bissau has opened its first

treatment centre for people living with HIV/AIDS in a newly refurbished

hospital, which will provide antiretroviral therapy free of charge.

It is is situated in the 116-bed Raoul Follerau hospital in the capital

Bissau which reopened on Thursday after being completely destroyed during

the 1998/99 civil war.

The hospital was renovated with the help of a US $5 million grant from the

Santo Egidio Community, a Roman Catholic centre for the promotion of peace

based in Rome.

Marco Impagliazzo, the president of the Santo Egidio Community, said at a

ceremony to mark the reopening of the hospital that its HIV/AIDS treatment

centre would distribute antiretroviral drugs free of charge to people

living with the virus in Guinea-Bissau.

Impagliazzo said the hospital would also treat AIDS patients from other

countries in the sub-region. Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony of

1.3 million people, is bounded to the north by Senegal and to the south

and east by Guinea-Conakry.

According to the latest available estimates from UNAIDS, there were 17,000

people living with HIV/AIDS in Guinea-Bissau at the end of 2001. About

1,200 people in the country died as a result of AIDS-related illnesses

that year.

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