BURUNDI: World Bank signs $36 million deal to fight HIV/AIDS
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© Menya Media
HIV/AIDS awareness campaign poster in Bujumbura
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NAIROBI, 25 July (PLUSNEWS) - Burundi and the World Bank signed a US $36-million agreement on Thursday to support a multisectoral project to combat HIV/AIDS in the war-torn country.
The project will come in five components. The first, of $9.3 million, would support a major expansion of the anti-HIV/AIDS activities being implemented by government agencies at the central, intermediary and peripheral levels, the World Bank said in a document detailing the project.
The second component, worth $13.4 million, will aim at stepping up civil society's response to the pandemic. It will do so by "scaling up" existing AIDS control activities managed by grass-roots organisations and communities, according to the document.
This component will also encourage the initiatives of private business to develop and implement prevention, care and support strategies for their employees and families. Money will be channelled directly through grants to associations, religious organisations, private enterprises, NGOs and community-based bodies to cover AIDS control activities.
With $7 million, the third component will focus on the integration of Burundi's orphans into society and support a pilot education project for them. The objective here is to limit risks to highly vulnerable groups of orphans, in the short term, by bolstering traditional family and community systems to protect and absorb the children.
"The component's first intervention is the placement of orphans with their extended family," the World Bank said. The "strategic objective" of this component, it said, was to raise the standard of basic education, social integration, and nutrition for the most vulnerable groups of orphans to that enjoyed by other children in the community.
"The largest intervention is to subsidise costs of primary education for orphans," it said. For the purposes of the component, orphans are defined as children up to 16 years old who have lost one or both parents. This definition has been used to avoid stigmatising orphans of HIV/AIDS.
Component four, worth $4 million, "is designed to reinforce the capacity of government agencies, civil society and the private sector, and strengthen the capacity of local organisations and rural communities in the design and implementation of demand-driven HIV/AIDS activities".
The fifth component, of $3 million, is to strengthen the capacity of the National AIDS Council (Conseil National de Lutte contre le Syndrome Immuno-Deficitaire Acquis) to coordinate the entire project.
In 1980, 1 percent of Burundian adults were HIV positive. In 1999 the adult HIV prevalence was 11.32 percent, the World Bank said. At the end of 1999, some 360,000 adults (aged between 15 and 49 years) and 19,000 under 15 years were living with HIV/AIDS. Women, the bank added, accounted for 55.8 percent of adult infections.
The World Bank money is geared to support implementation of the country's 2000-2006 action plan to prevent further HIV infections and lessen the impact on those already infected or affected by the disease.
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