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GUINEA: Little action as refugees fuel AIDS

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 27 July (PLUSNEWS) - Aid workers and medical staff are concerned that a massive influx of refugees from neighbouring Liberia is fuelling the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Guinea's remote southeast.

The country has just two HIV testing centres and one pilot project supplying anti-AIDS drugs to 50 people.

Estimates from a Ministry of Health survey conducted in 2002 indicated that 2.8 percent of the country's 8.5 million population was HIV-positive, and the combined prevalence rate for southeast Guinea's main towns in the Forest Region stood at seven percent.

Dr Amidou Haidara Cherif, director of the government hospital in a town near the southern frontier with Sierra Leone and Liberia, told the UN news service PlusNews: "Because very little has been done in the region, we think that the prevalence rate is easily more than seven percent, and much higher here than anywhere else in the country."

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