Former US President Bill Clinton offered a light of hope to the impoverished and AIDS-stricken African kingdom of Lesotho by opening up a pediatric AIDS clinic at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital. Around 22,000 children are HIV positive in the tiny country with an HIV rate of around 30 percent.
“Your country needs you. It cannot exist with 30 percent of adults that are HIV positive,” Clinton told a small group of citizens and dignitaries during a tour of the Maseru hospital.
Clinton is on a six-nation tour of Africa addressing the AIDS pandemic that is wracking the continent. The Clinton Foundation funded the $27,000 clinic, part of a $10 million initiative by the foundation to combat HIV and AIDS in rural Africa.
The clinic will supply life-extending antiretroviral (ARV) AIDS medication in hopes to lift the number of children receiving treatment from 100 to 750. In Lesotho, 22,000 children are HIV positive.
Local health authorities say the situation is dire and that medication, though extremely valuable, is not the only help needed. Famine, unemployment, and AIDS have virtually destroyed the nation’s food supply. The ARV medication requires food for patients to keep it down, further escalating the concern among locals.
Clinton said though the government was doing a good job in its efforts to combat its misfortunes through educational programs promoting HIV testing, condoms, and awareness, more funding is needed to provide more robust treatment.
He said the was a lot more work to be done and that abandoned babies sharing hospital beds was “immoral.”
The next stop on the tour will be South Africa, where tiny Lesotho is enclosed. The former president hopes to spread a similar message there about controlling the African AIDS epidemic.
“Lesotho is helping to prove that pediatric HIV/AIDS treatment is indeed possible in the developing world,” Clinton said. “We are trying all we can to help. Every child has a right to life, to grow up, to have a healthy life, to dream their dreams and to get educated.”
