While helping to renovate a dilapidated school for mentally and physically disabled children in the southern African nation of Lesotho July 8, Prince Harry addressed the kingdom’s mounting AIDS epidemic, the U.K.’s Times Online reports (timesonline.co.uk).

The relief effort was part of his Sentebale charity—which he cofounded with Prince Seeiso of the Lesotho Royal Family—aimed at supporting impoverished and vulnerable children in the AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan African country.

The prince told reporters that a “vast quantity of the population don’t accept they have AIDS—if you accept you have AIDS it’s a treatable disease.”

According to the article, estimates suggest as many as 200,000 of the country’s 500,000 school-age children and young people have lost one or both parents to the disease.