Major charity drive launched to provide aid to African country

A MAJOR charity initiative to provide medical and financial aid to a small country devastated by poverty and disease was launched yesterday.

The Action Lesotho project grew from initial contacts made when a team of athletes from the landlocked country near South Africa was based in Tralee, Co Kerry, for the 2003 Special Olympics.

Since then teams of volunteers from Kerry and Cork have regularly visited Lesotho to set up feeding programmes for some of the estimated 200,000 orphaned children in communities ripped apart by Aids and TB epidemics.