The introduction of free antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV patients in northern Malawi helped reduce adult mortality by 10 percent within eight months, according to a study published Saturday in the medical journal Lancet.

With help from the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, ART was made freely available to more than 80,000 patients from 2004 to 2006 by Malawi, where around one in seven adults has HIV.

After a free drugs clinic opened in the rural northern district of Karonga in June 2005, researchers found overall mortality among people aged 15 to 59 in their study population of 32,000 had fallen by 10 percent in eight months, compared with the three years prior to the clinic's opening.

Around 33 million people around the world are infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with two-thirds of them living in sub-Saharan Africa.

Some 3 million people in underdeveloped countries now receive antiretroviral therapy.