AFRICA/KENYA - SINCE MID 1980 AIDS HAS KILLED 1.5 MILLION KENYANS BUT SENEGAL REPORTS 2% LESS AIDS CASES COMPARED TO LAST YEAR

Rome (Fides Service) – The 13th International Conference on AIDS held in Nairobi closed on 26 September. The meeting was attended by many international personalities. Testimony given at the meeting included comforting information that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Senegal has decreased. In fact recent estimates say that infection in that country is 2% lower compared to last year. This improvement is due in great part to effective collaboration government-society, especially Churches. Senegal and Uganda are the two African countries which in the last two years have achieved the best results with regard to the reduction of HIV/AIDS cases. According to experts at the Conference, Senegal adopted immediate prevention measures and staged ongoing awareness campaigns particularly among young people. The country did not hesitate to involve NGOs and communities to tackle the problem and to adopt a valid capillary system of testing and surveillance. In Kenya since the first cases were diagnosed in the mid 1980s it is estimated that 1.5 million people have died of HIV/AIDS. One of the new initiatives launched by the 13th Conference on AIDS was a newspaper which will publish main medical discoveries made by scientists in Africa and elsewhere in the world. The newspaper, in English and French, will be distributed free as well as being available on line. AP (Fides Service 25/9/2003 EM lines 23 Words: 285)