Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 9/15/2004

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U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - COTE D IVOIRE: Nationwide HIV/AIDS prevalence survey to be launched in

November

2 - GAMBIA: Condom campaign angers Catholic cleric

1 - COTE D IVOIRE: Nationwide HIV/AIDS prevalence survey to be launched in

November

ABIDJAN, 15 September (PLUSNEWS) - Cote d'Ivoire is preparing to launch

its first nationwide HIV prevalence survey for fifteen years, covering

10,000 homes in both government and rebel-held areas of the divided

country, Mamadou Diallo, the head of UNAIDS in Cote d’Ivoire, said on

Tuesday.

The six-month survey would be launched by Cote d'Ivoire's Ministry to

Fight AIDS in November and its findings would be used to formulate a more

appropriate strategy to help people living with HIV/AIDS in the divided

country, he told PlusNews.

According to official data extrapolated from Cote d'Ivoire's first

comprehensive AIDS survey in 1989, the country has an HIV prevalence rate

of 9.5 percent, the highest in West Africa.

However, many health workers fear that two years after civil war split the

nation in two, the real rate is now much higher.

" What is interesting for us is to know the real prevalence rate, to get a

clear picture of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country in order to target

the needs and to gather the funds, " Diallo said.

" It will allow us to know more about the local communities and the way to

deal with the issue in the light of the way they perceive the disease, " he

added.

Volunteers who agreed to undergoing testing and answer a questionnaire

about their sexual behaviour would receive free treatment for AIDS if they

test positive, Diallo said.

Diallo said the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would fund the

provision of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to those survey participants found

to have AIDS.

PEPFAR, which was launched last year, has already earmarked US $14 million

for Cote d'Ivoire, which is one of only 12 African countries, including

Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda and Namibia, to benefit from the five-year

global initiative.

Washington has already spent $2.5 million on AIDS programmes in Cote

d'Ivoire. The PEPFAR programme aims to help provide ARV therapy to 77,000

Ivorians living with AIDS by 2008, prevent 265,000 new infections and

cater for 385,000 AIDS orphans.

However, no AIDS testing centres or health support structures to supply

antiretroviral drugs currently exist in the rebel-controlled north, which

contains a quarter of the country's 16 million population.

Neither is there any reliable data on the extent to which AIDS has

increased in the rebel-held areas since civil war broke out in September

2002.

[ENDS]

2 - GAMBIA: Condom campaign angers Catholic cleric

BANJUL, 15 September (PLUSNEWS) - The Roman Catholic Church has voiced its

opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in

Gambia, challenging a government-backed prevention campaign based on the

distribution of cheap contraceptives to the country's youth.

Father Gomez, a well-known Catholic priest who regularly presents

discussion programmes on local television, made the church's position

clear at a workshop on Advocacy and Effective Behavior Change Techniques,

sponsored by a Catholic youth organisation called Gambia AIDS Service

(GAS), in Banjul last week.

“The church does not teach that condoms should be used for the prevention

of HIV/AIDS or for contraceptive purposes,” Father Gomez said.

He advised the Catholic youths to seek more knowledge about their faith

and its teaching on the issue of HIV/AIDS in order to avoid being " misled

by public opinion that condoms should be made easily accessible for sex " .

The church's reaction against condoms was triggered by an increasingly

aggressive media campaign launched by the state-sponsored Gambia Social

Marketing Management Programme. This seeks to put condoms and

contraceptive pills within easy reach of all sexually active Gambians.

The campaigners have packaged the condoms and pills in chocolate-style

packs which are sold cheaply under the brand names of “cool” and “kairo”.

About 85 percent of the Gambia's 1.3 million population is Muslim, but the

christian churches still exert a strong social influence in the small West

African country, especially among its educated elite.

The Gambia has a relatively low HIV infection rate, officially estimated

at 1.6 percent of the population aged between 15 and 49.

However, many humanitarian workers fear that the real HIV prevalence rate

is much higher because of an increase in the sexual abuse of local

children.

Gambia has long been linked with sex tourism from Western Europe, but the

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a study published in May

that the main abusers of local children were Gambian males.

It warned that for most of the girls involved, this was just the beginning

of a downward spiral that often resulted in child pregnancy, clandestine

abortion, violent abuse, HIV infection and exposure to AIDS.

Between 1986, when the first case of AIDS was reported in Gambia, until

2001, the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) reported that over 1,500

people died from AIDS in the country. A further 8,500 people are estimated

to be living with the HI virus that eventually causes AIDS.

Father Gomez recognised the reality of the pandemic in Gambia.

“AIDS is real and it exists in our country,” he told the Catholic youths.

“Those who dismiss the virus and disease as American ploys to discourage

sex are the actual joke.”

But the priest, who administers the Roman Catholic cathedral in Banjul,

pledged that his church would fulfill its responsibility to by providing

its members with “moral guidance” to protect them from HIV infection.

[ENDS]

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