Morocco celebrates world AIDS day

Moroccan associations involved in fighting AIDS celebrate today the World AIDS Day, staging events and increased activity in promoting awareness and educating people, mainly risk population.

The Public Health department released figures showing the number of known cases reached 673 with a ratio of 69% of men and 31% of women by the end of October 1999. The major contamination cause remains sexual transmission with 74% of infections.

The national program for fighting sexually transmissible diseases (STD) and AIDS was successful with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO) in setting up a system of reporting and epidemiologic HIV infection monitoring, securing safe blood transfusion and decentralizing activity in the struggle against STD and AIDS.

Morocco, says Dr. Hakima Himmich, chairwoman of the Moroccan Association for the Struggle Against Aids (ALCS), which is making headway in its fight against the killer disease, is one of the three African countries getting funding from the International Solidarity Fund for the Struggle against AIDS to experiment tri-therapy with a limited number of patients.