The ongoing Congress on Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) and HIV/AIDS gathering the Portuguese Speaking Community (CPLP) member countries in Luanda, discussed Thursday here the "Three x Five Initiative" global AIDS strategy.

The "Three x Five Initiative" was established to respond to a situation of emergency, seeking to give access to anti-retroviral drugs to three million people until 2005, a target which has failed in most of the countries.

According to the WHO, the world organization put forward three general lines on the said initiative in 2002, for each member country to implement it in accordance with its reality.

Each country was approached into adopting the strategy, making it flexible, with the aim of reducing disease and death rates and rise life expectancy of the citizens. To this end, there is need for a political commitment on the part of governments, bringing the treatment combined with prevention, with the involvement of the community.

Angola is also on the list of the countries that failed to join the initiative and Deputy Health Minister, Jos Van-Dnem, justified this saying that the 30 years of war destroyed 70 percent of the country's sanitary network and three years of peace would be too little to rebuild all the infrastructures.

Meanwhile, the director of the National Institute of Fight Against HIV/AIDS, Dulcelina Serrano, said Angola, with a HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 2.8 percent, still has a window of opportunity to reverse the trend of the epidemics and hold out hopes to control the virus.

The WHO, in conjunction with other partners, has been assisting the Angolan Health Ministry, with the distribution of anti- retroviral drugs to about 3,000 people needing the treatment.

The CPLP Congress on STI and HIV/AIDS was inaugurated on November 29 by Angolan Prime Minister, Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos.

It has been jointly sponsored by the Eduardo dos Santos Foundation (FESA) and the Health Ministry and is intended to analyze the situation of the pandemics in the member countries.

Source: Xinhua