MALAWI: Long-awaited HIV/AIDS guidelines to be launched

With 14.4 percent of Malawi's 11 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the country has announced that its first-ever national policy on the disease would be launched on Tuesday.

Biswick Mwale, head of Malawi's national AIDS commission, said the policy would try to provide a legal and administrative framework to help tackle the pandemic.

He was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying: "The estimated HIV prevalence among adults of 15 to 49 years in Malawi in 2003 was 14.4 percent, which [is] 0.6 percentage points lower than the 2001 rate of 15 percent."

However, Mwale warned that statistically this did not represent a decrease in prevalence, but rather indicated that the epidemic was stabilising.

Theme (s): Care/Treatment - PlusNews, Children,

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