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Lesotho struggles to fight AIDS pandemic
Florence Panoussian
2005-11-29

The tiny Southern African kingdom of Lesotho is one of the world's worst AIDS-hit countries with a 27% infection rate, but only about 11% of people in need have access to free anti-retroviral drug treatment.

AIDS kills nearly 70 people each day in the landlocked mountainous state, but only 6 200 HIV-infected people receive free anti-retroviral drugs of the 56 000 who need them, according to both the government and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).

The government has over the past two years stepped up efforts and is a partner in an ambitious UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS programme (UNAids) to put about three million people around the world on anti-retrovirals by the end of the year, including 28 000 of Lesotho's 1,8-million people.

"Last year, there were 2 000 and all of them adults and today it is 6 200, of whom 200 are children," said Bertrand Desmoulins, Unicef's regional representative in Lesotho .

"This is not enough but it is a positive development, better than before and better than nothing at all," he said.

Unicef last month launched a worldwide programme to convince the governments in the worst HIV-affected countries to put children at the centre of their efforts to fight the disease.

Lesotho has the world's third-highest HIV/AIDS rate at 27%, according to the latest figures released by UNAids.

There are already about 100 000 AIDS orphans, 22 000 children have HIV and about 7 000 babies are born HIV-positive every year.

In this situation, it is not surprising that Lesotho has become one of the first countries in the world to provide special anti-retroviral drugs prepared specially for children and put in syrups instead of pills.

Former United States president Bill Clinton in July inaugurated a specialised clinic in the Lesotho capital, Maseru . His Clinton Foundation hopes to distribute free anti-retrovirals to about 750 children by the end of the year.

During that visit, Clinton said: " Lesotho is helping to prove that paediatric HIV/AIDS treatment is indeed possible in the developing world."

However, efforts to stem the pandemic have been handicapped by the fact that vast swathes of the essentially rural country lack proper roads and the medical infrastructure is skeletal.

A major impediment is the high cost of treatment -- until recently, each adult treatment cost 200 a year while for each child it was an astounding 1 200 a year.

Lesotho is among the world's poorest countries, with a per capita income of 590 a year, and two-thirds of the population earn less than 1 a day.

However, a partnership between the government, Unicef and the Clinton Foundation has led to lower costs: 140 per adult and 220 for every child.

But other problems remain. The anti-retrovirals need to be stocked in refrigerators -- a luxury in this penury-stricken country where most people do not have access to electricity. -- Sapa-AFP

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