Riccardi was in Maputo for the fifth anniversary of the Sant'Egidio AIDS treatment programme, known as DREAM (Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition).
But the Community's links with Mozambique go back much further. Sant'Egidio offered its Rome headquarters for the negotiations between the Mozambican government and the apartheid- backed rebel movement, Renamo, which led to the peace agreement of October 1992. Riccardi was one of the mediators in the negotiations which lasted, intermittently, for two and a hald years.
Speaking at a Maputo press conference, Riccardi said that in the 15 years since the signing of the peace agreement, Mozambique "has become an international model".
And not only for peace-keeping and political stability.
Starting in Mozambique, Sant'Egidio has been expanding its DREAM programme throughout Africa. There are now DREAM Centres providing the life-prolonging anti-retroviral therapy in nine other countries (Malawi, Tanzania, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry and Nigeria).
Because of the pioneer role of the Mozambican programme, Maputo "has become the African capital for training in AIDS treatment", said Riccardi.
Sant'Egidio says that under the DREAM programme, 35,000 Mozambicans have taken voluntary HIV tests. The 22,000 who were HIV-positive are being regularly assisted: that is, they are treated for opportunist infections, they are given food aid and health education, and their condition is carefully monitored.
When their CD4 count falls to 200 or less per microlitre of blood, patients are put on anti-retrovirals (CD4 are the cells in the humane immune system that are attacked by HIV).
Sant'Egidio can monitor the CD4 count of its patients thanks to the three molecular biology laboratories it has set up (in Maputo, Beira and Nampula. These laboratories can carry out the CD4 count and measure the viral load of patients - not only DREAM patients, but any HIV-positive person undergoing treatment in Mozambique.
Currently 12,000 people are receiving ARV therapy from the day hospitals known as DREAM centres. Sant'Egidio says that 95 per cent of its patients stick with the therapy - which is the best record in sub-Saharan Africa, and as good as, or better, that the figures in Europe and north America.
One of the Mozambican doctors working with Sant'Egidio, Ines Zimba, told the press conference that the key to ensuring that patients follow the treatment is "to treat them with kindness and respect".
"People must know that this is a chronic disease, and they must keep up the treatment for the rest of their lives", she stressed. "The answer lies in supportiung patients. The patients must feel that support, they must feel that they are at home".
The coordinator of the DREAM Centres, Francisco Cocote, added "We see our patients, not as clients, but as friends".
Sant'Egidio has also concentrated heavily on preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. DREAM has opted to give complete anti-retroviral therapy (rather than single shots of the drug nevirapine) to all HIV-positive pregnant women in the programme.
The results, Sant'Egidio says, prove that it is possible to virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission. Furthermore the drugs given allow the women to breastfeed their babies without the risk of passing on HIV in their milk.
Sant'Egidio says that in this programme some 2,500 babies have been born, free of HIV, to HIV-positive mothers - which is 98 per cent of all births to these women.
The DREAM programme is also providing treatment for 2,000 HIV-positive children, 80 per cent of them orphans. Riccardi announced that in the near future Sant'Egidio will open a special centre for the treatment of HIV-positive children in central Maputo.
One reporter noted that, when the Health Ministry speaks of AIDS, it gives the statistics, but does not mention the key role played by NGOs such as Sant'Egidio. Did the Sant'Egidio staff not feel slighted by this ?
Zimba dismissed any such concern. "When we work, we're not expecting any applause", she said. "Our sole objective is to work for the health of the people".
SOURCE: AIM
