They prefer to pay beers to buy condoms

Almudena Domenech

Mwanza (Tanzania), 15 nov (EFE).-“They prefer to pay beers to buy condoms”. With this phrase summarizing the clerk at a small shop in the fishing village of Igabilo in the Kagera region, why in the outlying and border of Tanzania areas are recorded every year 200,000 new infections of AIDS.

Epidemic reaches to between 10 and 15 per cent of the population of these small villages, where men come to fish in Lake Victoria off the coast of this border region of Northwestern Tanzania, a country where it is estimated that 3 in 10 people with HIV also suffers tuberculosis.

Fishermen spend time away from home, have multiple sexual partners, consume alcohol and are not very given to use condoms, has today reported doctor recipient Stephen, director of the programme Tanzania Developement and Aids Prevention (TADEPA), an NGO with the support of the Foundation Bristol-Myers Squibb.

In the whole region of Kagera, HIV prevalence is 3.4 per cent because contagion are lower in rural areas than in coastal.

For this reason, the members of the NGO have been put to work in 15 fishing villages, offering its inhabitants the rapid test of AIDS and giving them tips on how to prevent the disease or, in case if any contracted, as soon as possible put into treatment.

The doctor pointed out that more than two-thirds of cases of HIV/AIDS in the world are concentrated in southern Africa, an epidemic that only can control reaching the most recondite places.

This is the case of Igabilo, a place surrounded by luxuriant vegetation next to the huge Lake and where the poorly built wooden houses are stacked forming small crowds of dirt and poverty, and shelter for people, goats and chickens.

The streets of reddish sand roam many men and few women who sometimes have to meet several of them when they return from fishing.

They tired to Earth, come to the only store in the town, like almost everything in Tanzania called “Kilimanjaro” and, although they have boxes of condoms in their eyes, which are keen to is to take a beer and then another, and then another one.

A group of volunteers has visited them today to share with them his harsh experience, because many are HIV-positive and have lost some of their families and even their children, for this type of behaviour unconscious.

A long line of men and women have ignored the falling blankets in the rainy season water and have been in a row after being encouraged by the members of TADEPA to undergo rapid test HIV.

While both, one of the volunteers Lydia Josephat, 40, has been told to Efe how decided to try once her husband died of the virus, while in addition pregnant in just a few months. Today is a beautiful child that, thanks to antiretroviral therapy, has been saved from this evil.

Something similar happened to Victoria Kalungula, aged 55, he decided to emigrate to the city before her husband’s death to avoid social rejection and stigma faced by those affected, while to Edith Protase, 32, her separated family and could not even eat with them.

Boys are also involved, although machismo prevails in Africa, and, thus, Ramadha Mbarouk has learned to meet the 30 that had to do something to prevent that both he and his wife were sick. Now saves the lives of al.

“When you’re strong think that none of this can happen”, has confessed to Efe, at the time that has been said that after improve and have a “negative” daughter has decided to change his life. “Gangs, alcohol, or other women”, commented.

No age to help others, as has been said Rafael Rwiza, 55, on the death of his wife after years of suffering it has remade his life thanks to medication and now has another wife and five children.

All agreed that helping others makes them happy, while TADEPA gives them about $50 per month to support them financially, although the value of what they do is incalculable.

Volunteers slip at the bottom of this mugrientas villages and resort to football to raps games, theatre and traditional dances, some of them of a high burden of sexual, filling letters and contents of a message of prevention against HIV. It’s make friends to change mentalities. EFE

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