San Bush Women Contract HIV/AIDS

BOTSWANA: HEALTH/ /26/06/02 Sabanews

MAKGADIGADI PANS, BOTSWANA – HIV/AIDS is the new threat to the survival of BOTSWANA’s San bush people, Inter Press Service (IPS) reports.

The peaceful San have been forced to give up their nomadic life in the Kalahari desert. They live herded in compounds that rights activists call “concentration camps”. There are limits to the number of game these bush people can kill, and no possibility at all of their employment.

IPS reports that demoralised young San migrate to the towns, where they survive on unskilled jobs or begging. Sometimes, they are drawn into crime or prostitution, particularly the women.

Tanya, a 25 year old who looks 12 because of AIDS induced thinness, told IPS that she slept with men in Gaborne for a meal. Social workers found her starving near a hospital, and arranged for her to be taken back to her tribe's government-constructed village.

Dave Morgan, a tour guide, who has worked with the San since the mid-1970s, says he can see that young people returning from the towns are ill. BOTSWANA has the highest HIV infection rate in the world. “Now AIDS may finish off these bush people,” according to Morgan. /Sabanews/AN

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Men Can Make a Difference in HIV/AIDS Fight

ZIMBABWE: HEALTH/RIGHTS/26/06/02 Sabanews

HARARE – Men can help control AIDS in ZIMBABWE, says Padare, a men’s forum that works across ZIMBABWE to alter male attitudes to gender stereotyping in a report by Inter Press Service (IPS).

In ZIMBABWE one in four sexually active adults has AIDS. According to Padare’s Joy Mabenge, the high rate of HIV infection is probably a result of the reckless behaviour of men.

Mabenge was the winner of last year’s Africa Prize for Leadership in HIV/AIDS. The prize is better known as the “Nobel Prize for Africa”.

Padare asserts that the best way to curtail the transmission of HIV/AIDS is to target behavioural and attitudinal change in men. Unless that changes the fight against the disease would be difficult to win.

IPS quotes from a UNAIDS study that reveals that young girls are more prone to being infected with the virus not by boys of their own age, but by older men, known as “Sugar Daddies”
Most young girls are infected during their first few sexual encounters, maybe even during their very first, according to the same study.

Padare believes that men can change, and live and relate to women in a just and dignified manner. “As a men’s organisation there is frankness when we discuss these issues,” Mabenge is quoted in a report by IPS. /Sabanews/AN

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Help from THAILAND for HIV-positive Africans

THAILAND: HEALTH/ /26/06/02 Sabanews

BANGKOK – Affordable anti-AIDS drugs made in Africa will soon be available to HIV-positive Africans.

THAILAND’s Government Pharmaceutical Organisation, which makes the world’s cheapest anti-AIDS drugs, is sharing the technology with African countries, a report by Inter Press Service (IPS) says.

Starting with GHANA, NIGERIA, ZIMBABWE, KENYA AND CAMEROON are all lined up for Thai help in producing their own generic drugs at minimal cost and with no mark-up for profit.

Behind the bold move is the head of the Thai drug company’s research and development wing Dr Krisana Kraisintu.

”We will give them the formula we used to produce generic anti-AIDS drugs and provide staff training for our African counterparts here in THAILAND,” Dr Krisana told IPS in an interview.

Asked why, she replies: “This is for a humanitarian reason. We are a developing country and we want to help similar poor, developing countries in Africa.” /Sabanews/AN

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