Zambia to get extra $266 mln in US AIDS funds

LUSAKA, June 29 (Reuters) Zambia will receive an extra 266 million dollar in US help to fight AIDS, officials said, as US first lady Laura Bush launched the distribution of 500,000 mosquito nets in the African country.

US Global AIDS coordinator Mark Dybul said Zambia would get a total of 800 million dollar over five years from the United States President's 2003 Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which ends in 2008.

Dybul said the United States, which initially planned to give Zambia 4 million in the first four years of the PEPFAR programme, had raised the amount to 800 million dollar to cover five years.

Dybul met journalists as Laura Bush began a tour of the country to check on US-funded AIDS and malaria projects, part of a four nation African tour by the US first lady.

Zambia numbers among the southern African countries worst affected by Africa's HIV/AIDS pandemic, with an estimated one in five of the nation's 11.7 million people carrying the virus.

''We need broader efforts to fight the AIDS pandemic and to prevent new infections especially in Africa because this is were there are 70 per cent of AIDS orphans,'' Dybul said.

Laura Bush said 500,000 mosquito nets would be distributed in Zambia to protect more than one million children from contracting malaria through mosquito bites. Malaria kills more people than AIDS every year in Zambia.

''This programme has one goal . . . to eliminate malaria in Africa,'' she said after visiting schools, AIDS clinics and community help projects.

Zambian first lady Maureen Mwanawasa said stigma was the biggest challenge facing AIDS campaigners in her country.

''Stigma remains a silent but powerful opponent in the fight against AIDS and we need to tackle it,'' she said.

More than 25 million people globally have died of AIDS, an incurable disease that ravages the body's immune system, since it was first recognised more than a quarter of a century ago.

About 40 million live with HIV, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus is spread primarily through heterosexual sex.

Reuters SLD DB0844