Stigma, ignorance risks spread of AIDS in Sudan
Almost three-quarters of Sudanese youth are sexually active, but less than a tenth know how to use condoms, posing a serious threat that HIV and AIDS will spread in the country, a U.N. official said on Monday.
Sudan has a relatively low incidence of HIV/AIDS - 1.6 percent of adults are infected with the disease and 1.3 percent of young people - compared with sub-Saharan Africa where the rate of infection in some countries is as high as 10 percent.
But Musa Bugungu, the Sudan chief of UNAIDS, fears that could change because of shifting mores among younger people, which are bumping up against religion and old stigmas.
Sudan implements Islamic sharia law and extra-marital sex is taboo. Under a January peace deal sharia has been lifted in the south, but is still applied in the north and the capital, where many Christians also live.
Three-quarters of Sudanese aged 19-25 are having sex, according to the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, but few know how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases.
“There is sex outside of marriage and the issue will be of the next five to 10 years,” Bugungu said. UNICEF says HIV prevalence among pregnant women is 2 percent to 3 percent, although more analysis needs to be done.
But analysis can be difficult because the stigma against those with the virus is so great it stops people taking tests, he said.
“Unfortunately the stigma is high - (people) cannot disclose their status simply because they fear the community will go against them,” he told reporters.
People had been forced to leave their homes, were thrown out of school and even the offices next to the UNAIDS office had complained about their presence, he said, fearing infection from the disease and the lease was almost not renewed.
The stigma ran through all classes of society, Bugungu said and could only be prevented with information campaigns.
Outside the capital, however, radio and television are not common, so information is carried through schools and religious institutions. He said religious leaders were committed to help stop the spread of AIDS, but they would not advocate the use of condoms.
“They will not promote it because they look at it as if they were promoting adultery.”
He said the ministry of education had prepared a curriculum of AIDS awareness but did not have the $170,000 it needed to implement the plan in Sudanese schools.
WAR AND AIDS
While the United Nations has identified a risk among Sudan’s youth, it also sees problems as those displaced by 20 years of civil war return home in the south of the country, and in Darfur where large numbers of refugees live in crowded compounds without access to HIV health services or education.
“With the peace definitely there is going to be extra population movement,” he said of the end of the north/south conflict.
“You can see that there is a potential danger there.”
He said many displaced population would return home in the south, as would demobilised soldiers and without proper access to information or healthcare in the devastated south, the risk of the spread of AIDS was high.
He said the norms of society were destroyed within displaced populations which made them vulnerable.
“The younger generation can go and become prostitutes to get more money ... in such a situation ... rape and so forth can happen and access to condoms and other protective measures are not there,” he said.
Aid workers and refugees in Darfur have said rape is widespread in the camps in Darfur and witnesses say mass rape occurred during the height of the 2-1/2 year rebellion there.
The government admits that rape happens in Darfur but contests the extent of the problem.
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