Zambia will dramatically boost its distribution of free HIV/AIDS drugs next year to confront the disease that infects one in five Zambians and threatens the country's development, President Levy Mwanawasa said on Saturday. In a televised address on the eve of the southern African country's 40th anniversary of independence, Mwanawasa said the government would scale up its provision of free AIDS drugs to 100,000 people by 2005 from the current 12,000. He gave no cost estimate, but the government has previously said it needs around $500 million to fund planned AIDS treatment programmes over the next 5 years. "The poor performance of the economy and the increase in population has reduced the capacity for the government to maintain quality health services ... there is not enough money to spend on social services such as health," he said. An estimated one in five Zambians has the HIV virus that causes AIDS, which has claimed nearly 700,000 since 1984 -- when founding President Kenneth Kaunda became the first prominent Zambian to publicly declare one of his sons had died of the disease. Zambia's population of 10 million is growing at an annual rate of 2.5 percent.
