Doctors have warned that patients with HIV are giving up their medicine after being told by Pentecostal church pastors to rely on faith in God instead.

Medical staff working with children and young people say the lives of some church members are being put in danger because they are wrongly being told they can be cured.

In one case, an HIV-sufferer was given a plastic bottle of water by his pastor and told it would heal him. He later stopped taking his medicine and his condition worsened.

Robert Pigott reports.