UGANDA: Pfizer helps carry AIDS treatment burden

JOHANNESBURG, 14 Oct 2005 (PLUSNEWS) - Uganda's HIV testing boom has resulted in more patients than the country can handle, the head of Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, said on Friday.

Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell told Reuters, "Four or five years ago, the objective was to ... get people tested and then get them into counselling and care. We have moved past that. Testing is now more routine in Uganda, but that has created a new problem ... We now have more patients than we can possibly deal with."

At the launch of a new anti-AIDS clinic in the western Ugandan town of Mbarara, funded in part by Pfizer, McKinnell said he hoped the centre would help alleviate the patient load by providing treatment to at least 1,000 patients.

Uganda was previously regarded as the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic in Africa, but a government education campaign that placed great emphasis on testing has cut infection rates from 30 percent to about 6 percent.

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