Tanzania plans to triple the number of HIV/AIDS patients receiving free life-extending drugs to 440,000 by 2010, the country's health minister said on Monday.

About 2 million people out of a population of nearly 40 million are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

"We plan on providing anti-retroviral therapies to 250,000 people by the end of this year, 350,000 by the end of 2009 and 440,000 by the end of 2010," said David Mwakyusa, minister for Health and Social Welfare.

Mwakyusa said that the east African nation currently has 150,000 people living with HIV registered for treatment. The minister was speaking at a ceremony to lay the foundation for a new testing laboratory in Dar es Salaam.

The centre was the first in a series of 23 to be built by 2010 at a cost of $10 million funded by the Abbott Fund, the philanthropic arm of Abbott Laboratories.

In early 2007, the government said it aimed to bolster the number of those with access to anti-retrovirals to 450,000 by the end of this year. When the government started administering the free drugs in 2004, it reached only 2,000 people.