Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - Almost 30 out of 90 million Africans are affected by HIV/AIDS. Recently the World Health Organisation approved a programme to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS led by Brother Fiorenzo Priuli, a medical Doctor and a member of the St John of God Hospitaller Brothers who has worked for 30 years in Africa and at the St John of God Hospital in Tanguieta the centre of collaboration of hospitals in Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger to fight HIV/AIDS.
Doctor Fiorenzo is in Rome for two meetings one at a major city hospital the Policlinico, and another meeting at the St. Filippo Neri parish on the subject of AIDS in Africa and the use of alternative accessible medicines for poor people medicine.
Doctor Fiorenzo Priuli told Fides
“We are invaded by AIDS and an atrocious epidemic of typhoid which is increasingly serious. Between January 1 and 30 September we operated 70 cases of peritonitis due to typhoid perforation despite more than 200 water wells in this area disaffected, radio campaigns, market campaigns etc. The situation is critical because if we had 70 cases it means that hundreds of others died. The epidemic is the result of the lack of sewers and clean water. In Benin there is a struggle to guarantee 10 litres of clean water per person, whereas in Italy the daily amount of water consumed is more than 300 litres per person.
AIDS is another grave problem. We registered the first cases in Africa in 1988 when thanks to doctor Viganò, who started the Solidarity Africa group, we screened 200 people and found 2 positive cases… today between 11 to 13% of people who come for blood tests are HIV positive and as many as 23-25% of those who come with hernias, or bronchitis or malaria are HIV positive.
In this context and in the absence of famous antiretroviral drugs, which by the way have serious side affects, we are testing new types of therapy.
My work is mainly Togo and in Benin at a hospital which has become a general delegation of the St John of God Brothers named after our confrere St Riccardo Pampuri TB at the age of 33 in 1950. In Cameroon I operate children affected by polio or malformation”.
U.T.A. (Onlus Charity Association United for Tanguieta and Afagnan) started in 1996 to support St John of God Brothers in Africa, has decided to start a collection of funds to adopt beds in the Hospital which treats these patients. (AP) (20/10/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe:40; Parole:494)
