AIDS kills some 2,880 Tanzania teachers annually

Tanzania is losing an average of 2,880 school teachers to HIV/AIDS every year because of lack of condoms and life-prolonging drugs, the education minister said on Thursday.

Most of Tanzania's 155,000 teachers, who make up nearly 50 percent of all government employees, live in rural areas where condoms and drugs are hard to get.

"We have calculated that a total of 2,880 teachers are dying from HIV/AIDS every year," Education Minister Joseph Mungai told reporters.

Mungai said he had handed the Tanzania AIDS Commission proposals to distribute condoms to remote villages and islands. There are also plans to provide life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs to teachers who have developed AIDS.

"I have appealed for special measures which can lead to the supply of condoms as well as to the supply of life sustaining drugs to the affected teachers, so that their lives can be elongated and they can continue to teach," Mungai said.

With about 12 to 15 percent of Tanzanian adults infected with the virus, the health ministry has said it will sharply increase the number of HIV patients receiving the medicine to over 40,000 by the end of the year.

According to U.N. statistics, about 200,000 people in Tanzania are in acute need of medicines that slow the progress of AIDS.