Health News
Africa AIDS conference opens in Ethiopia amid funding concerns
Dec 4, 2011, 10:27 GMT
Addis Ababa - The 16th International Conference on Aids in Africa (ICASA) opened in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, against the backdrop of fears of further cutbacks by international donors in funding to fight the disease.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria had earlier announced it would not hold a new fund-raising round for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programmes, since donors in industrialized nations affected by the financial crisis were unable to meet their commitments to the fund.
The Global Fund has to date paid for some 70 per cent of anti-retroviral drugs distributed in Africa.
Around 5,000 delegates are expected to attend the five-day conference, which is to be made up of more than 1,000 sessions under the theme 'Own, Scale-up and Sustain.'
Around 68 per cent of the 34 million people who are infected with the AIDS virus worldwide live in sub-Saharan Africa.
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