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Aids Cases Rise in Ethiopia

Panafrican News Agency (Dakar), 9 April 2001

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—HIV/AIDS now accounts for about 50 percent of total hospital admissions in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, where casualty from the incurable disease has also risen, according to medical sources.

Getachew Fisseha, Head of the Addis Ababa HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control office, said the high AIDS prevalence has denied bed spaces to patients suffering from other diseases.

He revealed that there were now some 30,000 cases of full-blown AIDS in the country, out of an estimated 300,000 people living with HIV, the virus that causes the dreaded disease.

Fissaha said some 20,000 children have also been orphaned by the disease in the nation of some 60 million people.

Meanwhile, the Speaker of Ethiopian House of Representatives, Dawit Yohannes, has called for concerted efforts to stem the spread of the pandemic.

The society should show concern and love to people living with the virus, he added.