Tanzania Standard Newspapers|HIV/Aids in southern regions poses great risk

Editor's Comment

HIV/Aids in southern regions poses great risk

Editor
Daily News; Tuesday,August 05, 2008 @00:01

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The southern regions of Iringa and Mbeya are best known as the country’s leading bread baskets. But they are now being singled out as among the leading regions in HIV/Aids infections.

The obvious reasons are that these regions sit on one of the best used highways, connecting almost every country from Egypt to South Africa – important transit regions along the so-called Great North Road. So we are not just talking about the sex behaviours of the people of Iringa or Mbeya; we are also talking about trade in goods and human relations from Cairo to Cape Town!

It is therefore vitally important for health authorities in this country to spend more time educating our girls – and their families, of course – on the need to practise safe sex and abstinence preferably. As the country’s best food producers, we are not just losing people there; HIV/Aids is also eating into our very economic lifeline.

Currently, we spend too much time and money talking on HIV/Aids in Dar es Salaam and other major towns, where a large number of people have access to health advice and services as well. It’s time we moved down south. There are compelling reasons for doing this: the regions in question are not just good at food-production; they are also tourist destinations as well as transit outposts.

We should take time not just talking at the people. They also have to be made to understand how important they are to the economy of this nation. Of course, Iringa region particularly is also known as the best source of household help, mainly of young girls looking for work as domestic workers. The job in these regions must also include finding ways to keep our people in these regions gainfully employed. Poverty is the worst polluter, as the Chinese once said.

Condoms alone won’t do.