By Barnaby Phillips BBC South Africa Correspondent

The first ever purpose built village for people living with the Aids disease has opened in South Africa aiming to give more dignity and purpose to terminally ill patents.

We know that with Aids you're not going to just lay down and die

Rev Corinne McClintock

The village, just to the west of Johannesburg, will house about 450 men, women and children, who have no alternatives.

It has been built by Sparrow Ministries, a Christian group specialising in care for the destitute and the terminally ill.

Sparrow opened a hospice in Johannesburg 10 years ago for people dying from Aids, but that hospice is now hopelessly crowded.

Hope

The Reverend Corinne McClintock of Sparrow Ministries says the village will provide people with more space and comfort

"I think it gives them back their dignity and it gives them a little bit of hope," she says.

The UN says 28 million Africans are living with Aids

"You know there is the hope involved, because with Aids people tend to think that you're just going to lie down and die and we know that that's not going to happen, it can take you a number of years before that happens."

Ms McClintock denies that she is creating a type of leper-colony, a community of sick people who will be shunned by the rest of society.

She says the people who will come and live in the village are already destitute, and have been failed by society.

Many of them have been turned away from government hospitals, which can no longer cope because of the size of the pandemic.