Geldof sees ravages of AIDS in Ethiopia

Two decades ago when Bob Geldof was making his dramatic appeal for help for victims of a devastating famine in Ethiopia, HIV/Aids was all but unknown in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation.

Today, the Irish pop singer turned activist visited an fly-infested clinic and condemned the high cost of anti-retroviral drugs needed to treat the virus that causes Aids, placing them out of the reach of nearly all the three million people suffering from the disease in Ethiopia.

Walking through the decrepit clinic that handles 200 patients a day in this small town 217 miles south of the capital, Addis Ababa, Geldof met Ejigayew Yismashu, a 28-year-old pregnant woman too poor to come up with the 40p for drugs that would prevent her passing on the infection to her unborn child.

“This woman will give birth, and it is almost inevitable that the child will become infected without the drugs,” the 51-year-old father of four daughters said.

“It is very hard to come to a country and meet a dignified woman like this with no shame for her medical condition, then extort profit based on her misery - it’s disgusting,” he said on the third day of a five-day visit to Ethiopia to publicise the combined effects of severe drought-related hunger and HIV/Aids in Ethiopia ahead of a summit of the world’s seven wealthiest nations, plus Russia, this weekend in Evian, France.

Patients, many of whom had walked 12 miles for treatment, lay on filthy mattresses in the crowded wards of the Dilla Aids clinic.

Dr Erssido Lendebo, who is in charge of tackling HIV/Aids in the region where some 11% of the 13 million inhabitants are already HIV-positive, said the crisis is only going to get worse.

Ethiopia, with a population of 65.5 million and the world’s third-poorest nation, is one of 12 African and two Caribbean nations in line to benefit from the £10 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Act President George Bush signed into law this week.

If fully implemented and funded, the legislation is supposed to prevent seven million new infections, care for 10 million HIV-infected people and Aids orphans and provide anti-retroviral therapy for two million.