TANZANIA: Government plans to extend HIV testing services

Tanzanian health officials have announced plans to screen some 25 million people for HIV by 2008.

According to the Deputy Health Minister, Hussein Mwinyi, the new plan was a prerequisite for the government to achieve its target of distributing anti-AIDS drugs to at least 500,000 people by then.

He told a local newspaper, The Citizen, that the use of rapid HIV testing kits were already being encouraged at most health facilities.

The east African country spent about US $7 million on providing free antiretrovirals for 2,000 people in 2002.

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