Malawi given millions to fight HIV and Aids

The World Bank has granted Malawi £18m ($30) million to fight HIV/Aids which has ravaged the southern African nation in the last two decades. The money would also help the country’s government efforts to give more free treatment, said World Bank manager for Malawi, Timothy Gilbo, and the country's Finance Minister Ken Kandodo. "The money would help increase access to HIV and Aids prevention, treatment and mitigation services," Gilbo told Reuters news agency on Saturday.

Since the first case was reported in 1985, Aids has killed more than 800,000 people in the tropical south east African country. A whole generation of the adult age group has been wiped out by the disease, leaving more than one million orphans. But prevention programmes have lowered the overall prevalence from 14 to 12 percent, and better access to free medicine has helped to reduce the number of people dying from HIV related illnesses by 70 per cent. Half of Malawi's population of 13 million are children and one in seven dies of a preventable disease before his or her first birthday, according to figures from the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF. Many eligible children don't attend school and of those who do, only 25 per cent complete primary school. The country’s Aids epidemic has heavily affected children. At the end of 2007, an estimated 91,000 children in Malawi were living with HIV, indicate figures from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS). And more than half a million children had been orphaned by Aids.

Schools have been badly hit by Aids as trained teachers are dying from the disease or face discrimination in the local community if HIV positive. HIV is still a taboo subject in many communities within Malawi and discrimination is common. So very few people living with HIV tell anyone about their status. Many people with the disease also have difficulty talking about it with their families, and even some support groups meet in secret. But the country is working hard to turn this attitude around. Last year 245 teachers declared their HIV positive status in 2008, the country’s Daily Times newspaper reported.

In 2004, President Bakili Muluzi revealed that his brother had died of Aids three years before and urged Malawians to challenge the stigma associated with Aids. “I have no apologies in making this publicly known to Malawians, Agence France Presse news agency quoted him as saying. “We should be open and break the silence about HIV/AIDS. The fight against the killer disease can only succeed if we break the barriers of silence, stigma and discrimination.”

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children