About 7% of Civil Servants in Tanzania Are HIV-Positive, Official Says

At least 7% of Tanzania's 25,900 civil servants are HIV-positive, according to figures released last week by government official George Yambesi, Xinhua News Agency reports. Yambesi, deputy permanent secretary in the president's office in charge of public service management, announced the numbers at a workshop aimed at planning HIV/AIDS programs for public offices in the country. Yambesi said, "Many public workplaces are feeling the burden of having to work with increasingly weak and disabled persons and to fill in for fallen colleagues or those who are in hospital or at home." According to a local survey, most deaths that have occurred in the last four years among ministry officials, local government authorities and regional secretariats have been linked to HIV/AIDS (Xinhua News Agency, 3/20). According to UNAIDS, about 1.6 million people in Tanzania are HIV-positive, though the agency says the number could be higher because officials estimate that only one-fifth of the HIV cases in the country are reported (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 3/13).