Zimbabwe shows way for Africa AIDS fight - Mugabe

HARARE, Dec 1 (Reuters) Zimbabwe is showing the way for Africa in the fight against HIV/AIDS, President Robert Mugabe said today as he urged Zimbabweans to take greater personal responsibility in stopping the epidemic.

Zimbabwe is among the countries worst hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which kills more than 3,000 people every week and accounts for 70 per cent of hospital admissions.

But the crisis-hit southern African nation has also become one of the few AIDS bright spots on the continent after its HIV prevalence rate declined to 18.1 per cent this year from 25 percent five years ago.

Health experts attribute the drop to more condom use and the success of programmes encouraging people to have fewer sexual partners.

Mugabe, in a speech to mark World Aids Day published in the official Herald newspaper, said Zimbabweans should remain on guard for a disease that the United Nations says killed 2.9 million people globally in 2005, 2.1 million of them in Africa.

''I wish to urge all Zimbabweans to adopt a radical shift in the fight against the epidemic by reducing the personal risk of contracting HIV,'' Mugabe said.

''We must not be complacent. This drop, which is the only one in southern Africa, suggests that we are on the right track and we have many lessons to share with our neighbours,'' he said.

The veteran Zimbabwe leader, who has ruled the country since independence in 1980, said the government anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment programme had been hamstrung by lack of funding.

Critics say this has been worsened by a deep economic recession blamed on official incompetence.

The government had increased the number of people accessing the life prolonging ARVs from 26,000 in 2005 to 46,000 this year -- although the figure is still far short of the 600,000 people who need the drugs -- Mugabe said.

REUTERS PDM KP1640