Bill Nighy calls for aid for Malawi

London: Actor Bill Nighy has urged the British government to increase the aid for residents of Malawi, following his recent visit to the African country.

The actor paid a visit to the nation as an Oxfam ambassador to witness how the organisation has helped locals. Nighy wants the British government to invest extra cash into programmes to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, and has urged bosses at pharmaceutical companies to make more medicines available, reports a website. "I`ve been in Malawi, which is one of the poorest countries in the world. I went there on behalf of Oxfam, for whom I`m an ambassador, and I visited a hospital and I visited a school, and I visited other places, an HIV centre, with a view to witnessing the fact that the money does get through and also to come back to report that they need help and they need it desperately," said Nighy. "Next week is the government`s Autumn Statement (an address made to parliament about economic forecasts) and we are hoping passionately that they will announce that they are extending their aid to Malawi and that there is longterm aid in the works because they need long-term stuff," he added. The actor hopes judicious planning is put in place. "There are a million people in Malawi with Aids currently, 650,000 of them don`t have the medicines. It`s a matter of life and death... it`s a death sentence. We have everything, we have to deliver it to them. We have all the medicines they need, the pharmaceutical companies and everybody could combine to make this problem go away," he added. IANS