G/Bissau Warns Aids Patients Without Treatment Since Coup

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G/Bissau Warns Aids Patients Without Treatment Since Coup

Wednesday, 21 November 2012 21:48

(AFP) – HIV-positive people in Guinea Bissau have been without access to treatment since the Global Fund to fight AIDS suspended funding over an April military coup, the west African nation's AIDS boss said Wednesday.

"Our main funders, the Global Fund, suspended financial aid" following the April 12 coup, said Joao Jose Silva Monteiro, coordinator of the national secretariat to fight AIDS.

"Our staff and volunteers are no longer being paid and the drugs have dried up," he warned. "Many patients no longer come to us because they are demoralised and are convinced they are going to die."

He stressed that his organisation, which is part of the health ministry, did not conduct work of a political nature and appealed for funding to resume.

"One cannot punish it as if it were part of the government," Monteiro said.

According to government figures, Guinea Bissau has an HIV prevalence rate of 3.3 percent, one of the highest in western Africa.

The April coup leaders have handed over power to a civilian administration following a transition deal but many of the country's Western partners do not recognise the new authorities and have frozen aid.

Comments

0 #3 2012-11-26 20:54

Well Said Mr. Tutankhamun !
This is how Mother Africa is, full of Doctor Degree Holders and professors with a real profession in the African political arenas, and any of them who get the chance of it will act like an ignorant !

In the service of the truth I Remain

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+2 #2 2012-11-22 20:39

Allow me to be the devils advocate.

I am tired of these never ending pleas from failed states. African countries need to learn to solve their own problems. For how long do we have to depend on foreign aid to solve our health issues? As if that is not enough, we still expect them to continue funding our BASIC needs (such as healthcare), while we continue fight and kill each other.

The global fund is not the Central bank of Guinea Bissau. When the respective parties involved in this sensless hunger for power realize that it does not help anyone, they will drop their weapons and focus on more important things.

Sometimes inorder to help someone you must allow them to make mistakes.

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