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PORT MORESBY - Former US president Bill Clinton is due to visit Papua New Guinea early next month to launch World Aids week and promote voluntary testing for HIV/Aids.
His charity organisation, the Clinton Foundation, is assisting PNG combat the disease by helping train nurses and doctors to
administer HIV/Aids drugs.
PNG's Health Minister Peter Barter said Clinton, as a high-profile figure familiar to most people in PNG, would help focus Papua New Guineans on the seriousness of the problem facing the country.
"We need leaders to speak out, we couldn't have a much better speaker to speak out," Barter said.
PNG has the highest incidence of HIV/Aids in the Pacific with around two per cent of the population estimated to be HIV positive, though some estimates put the figure much higher.
Clinton is due to meet Prime Minister Michael Somare to discuss the disease and ways to combat it.
A specific date has not been set for his visit but the former president is only expected to be on the ground for a few hours.
Clinton was expected to focus on the need for more HIV/Aids testing, an area where PNG "failed miserably" last year with only 4,000 people tested out of a target of 50,000, Barter said.
"We expect him to make a substantial statement to gather the interests of the NGOs, the churches, all those people involved and encourage them to do even more than they've done in the past," he added.
Barter said the Aids message was not getting down to the rural areas but the PNG government had quadrupled its HIV/Aids funding and some would be targeted to local level governments to increase awareness in the districts.
"People who are HIV positive must understand that there is something we can do about it, we can't cure them but at least we can put them onto treatment," he said.
Barter said the real prevalence of HIV/Aids in PNG was not known because not enough people were being tested.
New Voluntary Counselling and Testing centres would be rolled out across the country next year, he said.
At present there were only four such centres when PNG needed at least one in each of its 89 districts.
Reducing the stigma surrounding Aids and training medical staff to administer anti-retroviral drugs at the centres would encourage people to come in and be tested, Barter said.
- AAP