Report hails Zambia AIDS program

TORONTO, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Leaders of an AIDS treatment program in Lusaka, Zambia, said at a conference in Toronto that the treatments have saved multiple lives.

The program's leaders said at the 16th International AIDS Conference that a report analyzing the cases of 25,000 patients given antiretroviral drugs in Zambia had found the program to be successful, The New York Times reported Monday.

Dr. Jeffrey Stringer, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, said in the report that AIDS death rates in Zambia had plummeted to compare favorably with those in the United States since the country's government opened 18 clinics in April 2004.

Stringer said the next step in the battle against AIDS in Zambia is to break down the disease's stigma so that the hospitals can work on "getting patients to come in before they are deathly ill."

He said many patients could benefit more from antiretroviral therapy if the disease was identified earlier.