Taoiseach sees South Africa’s HIV/Aids crisis up close

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern came face to face with the horrifying scale of South Africa’s Aids crisis yesterday as he visited a hospice ward where five people had died of the disease in the previous 24 hours.

The Leratong facility, set up by Irish priest Fr Kieran Creagh, has just 18 beds, but provides the only care of its kind for a township of 500,000 people.

More than 40% of males aged between 18 and 45 in the shanty town, outside the capital Pretoria, are estimated to be infected with HIV.