AFRICA: AIDS treatment expansion urged

JOHANNESBURG, 14 June 2006 (PlusNews) - Anti-AIDS treatment programmes need to expand dramatically in Africa if we are to reach all those in need, the acting US Global AIDS Coordinator, Dr Mark Dybul, said on Tuesday.

"We need to expand four- or five-fold from where we are now to reach all those who need antiretroviral (ARV) therapy, but it will take years to train enough doctors and nurses to manage this," the Associate Press quoted him as saying.

Dybul suggested that nurses share some of the work done by doctors and that more people be trained as counsellors to meet the continent's enormous demand.

As an example he cited Uganda, where clinical officers who were neither nurses nor doctors were being trained to monitor patients taking antiretroviral medication.