Malawi losing 10 people per hour to AIDS

AIDS kills about 10 people every hour in Malawi and the government of the impoverished southern African nation is increasingly unable to cope with the crisis, Health Minister Heatherwick Ntaba said.

"This is a disaster because it means that the country is losing 240 people every day to HIV/AIDS and at the end of 10 years an estimated 876,000 will die if the trend continues," Ntaba said in an interview late on Monday.

Malawi, with a population of about 11 million, is one of the countries at the centre of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, home to almost two thirds of those infected with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

The government estimates about 1 million Malawians are infected with HIV and about 640,000 have died from AIDS-related causes since 1985.

Ntaba said Malawi was increasingly finding itself outpaced by the disease, unable to spend the money necessary to develop proper strategies against it while simultaneously losing medical personnel to AIDS-related illness or better jobs overseas.

Malawi now spends about $12 per capita on health annually, far below the $36 per capita recommended by Health Ministry officials.

"Spending $12 per capita on health...we are not going to make a dent in the fight against HIV/AIDS," Ntaba said.

Research by Malawi's Health Ministry shows that about 46 percent of all new adult infections occur in people younger than 24, and about 60 percent are in girls.

Malawi last year launched a $196 million plan to distribute free antiretroviral drugs under a five-year programme paid for by the global fund set up to tackle AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Fifty sites across the landlocked country were identified to receive the drugs, but Health Ministry officials said only about 50,000 people were now getting them, well below target.

Ntaba said poverty, lack of recreational facilities and high unemployment were some of the factors driving particularly girls into early and unsafe sex or marriage.

Ntaba said Malawi's health sector was struggling because many medical professionals leave for better paying jobs overseas and others die from AIDS, leaving some 90 percent of physicians' posts and 35 percent of nurses' jobs in the country vacant.

"This is mainly due to HIV/AIDS and of course other factors like brain drain," he said.