Rural ARV clinics for a cool ten million
A new anti-retroviral therapy clinic opened this Friday at the Okongo
Hospital some 80km from Eenhana in the Ohangwena region. The ARV clinic is
funded by the US government under its PEPFAR funding programme. Four more ARV
clinics are in the pipeline under the same tranche of funding.The clinic was
officially opened by Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr Richard Kamwi.
Matt Harrington of the US embassy in Windhoek represented the donor.The Okongo
ARV clinic is one of five currently renovated with N$10,909,573 in funding from
the US government through the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the
President?s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Research and the
conducting of feasibility studies on these five projects started in 2002.
Renovation of the clinics was approved in January 2007, and construction began
on the Okongo project in the second half of 2008. PEPFAR contributed N$2,076,509
to the Okongo project.The Namibian office of the CDC Global AIDS Programme was
launched in September 2002. CDC assists the Ministry of Health and Social
Services in countering the HIV epidemic. The Centre further works to
reduce HIV transmission and provide treatment and care for those already
infected with HIV and tuberculosis (TB). It provides extensive technical
expertise to help increase laboratory capacity to support anti-retroviral
therapy (ARV), prevention of mother-to-child transmission early infant
diagnosis, and TB diagnosis.Since 2000, the US government has supported
Namibia?s efforts to build effective, community-based responses to the HIV/AIDS
epidemic. All activities in Namibia supported by PEPFAR are guided by the
government of Namibia?s National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS, which defines its
strategy to combat the epidemic.