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| Fear battles fatalism in Africa's AIDS fight Posted: 04 Mar 2011 07:17 AM PST JOHANNESBURG/LONDON (Reuters) - Messages from years of AIDS campaigns are finally filtering down to the dingy streets of Johannesburg where sex workers turn tricks.
But all of that can vanish in an instant when a customer offers a little more cash to have sex without a condom. At least 5.6 million of South Africa's 50 million people are infected with the AIDS virus, but new studies show that here and elsewhere on the continent fear of the disease and knowledge about how to prevent it have begun to change sexual habits, and in some places dramatically reduce infection rates. "If you don't take care of yourself, you're risking yourself. If I get an infection, it will be my fault," said a sex worker who gave her name as Sarah. Still, with around 14 million people receiving government assistance and a quarter of the workforce unemployed, there will be others who take the money -- and the risk. "There are some ladies who are forced to do it without a condom. If the client puts a certain amount on the table, some of them can't refuse it," said sex worker Dudzai. East and Southern Africa are the areas most heavily affected by the HIV epidemic. Out of the total number of people worldwide in 2009 living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, 34 percent were in 10 countries of Southern Africa, according to the U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Experts said one of the ways HIV spread through Southern Africa was via sex between long-haul truckers and prostitutes. Recently, however, HIV new infection rates have been falling in the region and in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV incidence declined by 25 percent between 2001 and 2009. "We're hoping that this 25 percent decline over the last 10 years will start to speed up," Paul de Lay, deputy director of UNAIDS, told Reuters in an interview. "It's not happening fast enough. It's progress, but if it continues at this rate then we are talking another 40 to 50 years of this epidemic until it gets down to the lowest levels." The change in South Africa has been dramatic. A decade ago, the government was putting its faith in those who denied that HIV infection caused AIDS, and funded traditional healers who proposed garlic and beetroot as cures while withholding proven drugs for treatment. Now condoms are available for free at government offices, public awareness adverts saturate TV airwaves and the state has allocated billions of dollars for treatment and prevention. Trendy clubs have condoms in bathrooms and college students are well versed in safe sex, but there is always the risk that as the HIV problem begins to fade, fear of AIDS will also subside and complacency could start to creep in. "One of the biggest challenges we have with this epidemic is that without a vaccine or a cure, we need to keep the momentum of the prevention programmes going. They have to be constantly refreshed because you have new cohorts of young people entering into risk behaviour every four or five years," said de Lay. "CLIMATE OF FEAR" In neighbouring Zimbabwe, researchers have found that fear of infection and mass social change have driven a huge decline in HIV rates. In a study last month in the journal PLoS Medicine, British researchers said Zimbabwe's epidemic was one of the worst in the world until the rate of people with HIV almost halved, from 29 percent of the population in 1997 to 16 percent in 2007. Simon Gregson of Imperial College London, an investigator on the study, told Reuters he thought there may be certain factors about Zimbabwe that might signal why the turnaround there has been so dramatic, and has come earlier than in other countries. For a start, Zimbabwe had a major problem so awareness of HIV and fear of AIDS was acute. "Zimbabwe is (also) distinctive in having high levels of education and quite a strong marriage system," he said. "It might be that messages that promote being faithful and sticking to one partner are more easily digested and translated into action in a country like Zimbabwe." While campaigners applaud such success, their joy is tinged with uncertainty about how to maintain it. De Lay points to places in the West like London and San Francisco, where high rates of HIV infection at the beginning of the epidemic in the late 1980s have faded into the background. In a recent British TV programme where groups of teenagers were questioned about sexually transmitted diseases, none mentioned HIV. And a study from France last year found that among gay men, HIV rates are "out of control" despite an overall fall in the number of new HIV cases there. "What we are seeing.. is a reduced sense of vulnerability, a reduced sense of how severe the disease is," de Lay said. And that opens up a dilemma about whether scaremongering is healthy. "We can't create a constant climate of fear, but at the same time people should have a healthy respect for how serious this is," said de Lay. Further north on the African continent, in its most populous nation Nigeria, it appears that fatalism, not fear, rules. In Lagos, traders in Obalende, a raucous market selling everything from bananas to motorcycles, said they had become more aware of the dangers of HIV in recent years. But this did not always affect their actions. "People are getting more aware. They see things on TV and when they go to the hospitals," said Mohammed Babaji, a 42-year-old trader selling small barbecue kits. Babaji said he tried to remain faithful to his wife, and that some of his fellow traders took their own clippers to the local barbershop to avoid possible contact with infected blood. Yet an aversion to condoms persists. "I know I am supposed to wear condoms to protect myself, but most young men here will not use them because they will not enjoy as much," said Abdul Abdulkarim, 25 years old and single, as he touted leather sandals laid out on a plastic table. "The men here have a lot of girlfriends and they use prostitutes. I don't think Nigerians really fear death." (Additional reporting by Agnieszka Flak in Johannesburg and Shyamantha Asokan in Lagos, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton) Copyright © 2008 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Shots fired at protest in Libyan capital Posted: 04 Mar 2011 07:17 AM PST TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Shooting rang out across a district of the Libyan capital on Friday as forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi broke up a crowd of protesters shouting "Gaddafi is the enemy of God!" The demonstrators spilled out of the Murat Adha mosque in the Tajoura district of eastern Tripoli after Friday prayers, and several hundred of them began chanting for an end to Gaddafi's four decades in power. "This is the end for Gaddafi. It's over. Forty years of crimes are over," said Faragha Salim, an engineer at the protest in Tajoura. But a few minutes later, pro-Gaddafi security forces in military fatigues and with green scarves around their heads arrived at the scene of the protest. They fired tear gas and there was the sound of repeated and heavy gunfire, though there was no immediate evidence that anyone had been hit by gunshots. Tripoli is Gaddafi's principal stronghold after large swathes of the country rejected his rule, and the authorities have tried to portray it as a city going about its life as normal. But the protest punctured that image. For a short time, Gaddafi's opponents took over a corner of the city. They waved the tricolor flag adopted as the symbol of the revolt against his rule, and scrawled graffiti on walls insulting Gaddafi and saying: "We will not give up!" About 45 minutes after security services intervened, the area in front of the mosque was cleared of protesters and a few dozen Gaddafi supporters in tracksuits -- who had been bussed into the neighbourhood -- took over. Security forces looked on as the supporters threw rocks at a residential area where they believed protesters were hiding, and occasional shots rang out. Away from the Tajoura district, the rest of the city appeared tense but calm. There was heavy security at Algiers Square, near the centre, and in the central Green Square, Gaddafi supporters sang and waved green Libyan flags. EXCHANGES OF FIRE In Zawiyah, about 50 km (30 miles) west of the Libyan capital, pro-Gaddafi forces fought for hours with rebels who have been holding the town centre, two residents told Reuters by telephone. "From 11 a.m. (0900 GMT) until now Gaddafi's mercenaries, mainly from Africa, have been opening fire on people here," said a local man called Ibrahim. "Hundreds of victims are now in the town hospital. It's incredible. We can't let Gaddafi continue massacring his own people. The streets are empty, shops are closed and only cars used by insurgents to transport victims are visible. "We have no choice but to continue our fight against this dictator." The account could not be verified independently. Earlier, security guards stood in the way when journalists tried to walk out of the gates of the their hotel to cover the protests in Tripoli. Officials later allowed them out of the hotel but only if they boarded buses with government drivers who were taking them to locations selected by the authorities. A Libyan government spokesman said journalists' movements were being restricted because their presence could trigger violence from what he described as affiliates of al Qaeda. "These are exceptional circumstances. I know you're going to talk about it and twist it the way you want," said the spokesman, Mussa Ibrahim. "We are preparing to pay this price of preventing you guys from reporting to avoid turning Tripoli into Baghdad." (Additional reporting by Lamine Chiki in Algiers; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Giles Elgood) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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